Uccellini: Sonata Sesta (Op.5)

Description

For soprano instrument and continuo. A substantial work that develops the opening theme in different moods and metres; impressive without being too difficult technically.

The present sonata comes from Marco Uccellini’s Sonate over Canzoni Da Farsi a Violino Solo, & Basso Continuo, OPERA QUINTA, published in Venice in 1649.

Marco Uccellini was born in 1603 and died in 1680. Unlike most composers of his day, he was known primarily as a specialist in instrumental music. He published nine collections of instrumental pieces (of which the first is lost). He greatly expanded the scale of the sonata of his time, sometimes by means of obsessively developing a particular theme.

Like much of Uccellini’s work, this music is primarily intended for the violin. However, while many of his pieces are written in a virtuoso style involving passages across the strings, a few sonatas, in- cluding the present one, are in a somewhat more neutral style that allows the participation of other instruments (cornetto, recorder,etc.); another example from the same collection, the Sonata duodecima can be found in the anthology Easy Music of Monteverdi’s Time, Volume II (DOL 113 ↣).