Concerto Form in Music: A History of the Concerto

The word "concerto" is Italian for "concert," and a wide array of musical pieces may be presented as a concerto. In most cases, concertos highlight a virtuoso soloist playing extended featured passages with orchestral accompaniment. Concerto are typically written to showcase soloists on instruments including violin, viola, cello, trumpet, trombone, oboe, clarinet, and piano. Soloists may even commission a concerto from an admired composer. Present-day orchestras regularly feature concertos in concert programming.

Many canonized composers have written numerous concertos, including Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms. The form also enjoyed great renown in twentieth-century classical music with composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, Carl Nielsen, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Paul Hindemith, and Leonard Bernstein.

Concertos are associated with instrumental soloists, but their earliest iteration was a form of vocal music.

• Vocal composition: In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, late Renaissance and early Baroque composers produced vocal music accompanied by an orchestra called concertos, or concerti. Examples include Heinrich Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich and Giovanni Gabrieli's In Ecclesiis.
• Instrumental ensemble: By the High Baroque period, the concerto form had been largely claimed by instrumental ensembles. The Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli introduced the concerto grosso, a concerto featuring different sections of the ensemble rather than one soloist. Johann Sebastian Bach further established the musical form with his Brandenburg Concertos. High Baroque composers George Frideric Handel and Giuseppe Torelli also explored the concerto form.
• Sonata form: In the Classical period, composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, and C.P.E. Bach composed concertos using the sonata form and highlighted string instruments. Mozart, for example, composed five violin concertos and a sinfonia concertante for both violin and viola. C.P.E. Bach composed woodwind concertos, including two oboe concertos and five flute concertos.
• Virtuoso form: The Romantic era of classical music was a decades-long celebration of the virtuoso and produced many concertos. Pianists received newfound attention with piano concertos by Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff. Cello concertos by Antonín Dvořák and Edward Elgar showcased the popularity of the tenor string instrument.
• New forms: The classical music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including concertos from this era, spans many styles. Composers such as Shostakovich and Hindemith created works in the spirit of the classical concerto, and others, like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Benjamin Britten, drew inspiration from the Romantics. During this time, composers pushed the limits of the structure, rhythm, and harmony of concertos, namely Elliott Carter and György Ligeti.

The concerto is a wide-ranging musical form that can feature instrumental soloists, vocalists, or instrument sections:

• Virtuoso soloist: In most cases, concertos highlight a virtuoso soloist playing extended featured passages with the orchestra providing accompaniment.
• Vocal soloist: Occasionally, concertos will highlight vocals, particularly the soprano voice, but the form is widely associated with instrumental music.
• Concerto grosso: Concertos may feature multiple instruments or sections. These concertos are typically presented as a concerto grosso—in which varying instruments are featured at different times—or as a "concerto for orchestra," a phrase favored by twentieth-century composers like Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith.

Centuries of classical music have produced iconic concertos, starting in the Baroque period and extending through the present day. Highlights of the form include:

1. 1. Clarinet Concerto K.622 (1791) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2. 2. Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor" (1810) by Ludwig van Beethoven
3. 3. Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 (1878) by Johannes Brahms
4. 4. Horn Concerto No. 1 (1883) by Richard Strauss
5. 5. Concerto for Orchestra (1943) by Béla Bartók
6. 6. The Five Sacred Trees (1995) by John Williams
7. 7. The Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (2002) by Philip Glass

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