Research in Musicology
Geminiani's third and last set of original concertos was published on 4 February 1748. The parts were handsomely produced, with an engraved frontispiece and a quotation from Horace. The concertos are dedicated to the Academy of Ancient Music. This was one of the leading London musical societies, founded on 1 March 1726 as the Academy of Vocal Music by a group of professional musicians – including Geminiani – and aristocratic amateurs: the society mounted regular concerts at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. Geminiani's statement that "in the composing of [the Opus 7 concertos] great Study and Application hath been used, to make them acceptable to the Public, and in particular to your Academy" is reminiscent of Gottlieb Muffat's preface to his Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo (Augsburg, c1738-1739), which says that the composition was "laborious" and cost "much effort". Mozart's dedication of his "Haydn" quartets, likewise, speaks of them as "the fruit of long and laborious effort".
Opus 7 had something of a mixed reception. The most virulent criticism of Opus 7 came from Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768), who devoted over twenty pages of his unpublished treatise Il Trionfo della pratica Musicale, probably written in about 1760, to a very detailed analysis of what he calls a "Fuga Mostruosa" by one Sgranfione Miniacci, a not-quite-exact anagram of Francesco Geminiani. The fugue in question is the second movement of No. I, which the composer – perhaps unwisely – entitled "L'Arte della Fuga".
In more recent times critical opinion has on the whole remained hostile. One of the few modern writers to praise Opus 7 unstintingly is Arthur Hutchings, who considered the set Geminiani's "finest achievement", and lamented that "one frequently hears some of the Op. 3 concertos, especially a rather dull one in D minor [No. IV], but none of the very good ones in Op. 7". Whether Opus 7 is superior to the composer's other works may be open to debate, but there can be no doubting the high level of originality and invention throughout all six concertos. The music is certainly quirky – even eccentric – at times, but it is unfailingly interesting, and there are many movements of outstanding refinement and beauty.
It is to be hoped that the present volume will allow Geminiani's Opus 7 concertos to be judged afresh, free from the prejudices engendered by the rather ill-considered opinions of Hawkins and Burney.
Geminiani's first orchestral publications were two sets of adaptations of Corelli's solo sonatas Op. 5 as concerti grossi, which appeared in 1726 and 1729. Although such arranging was said to be much despised by Veracini and scorned by Burney as "musical cookery, not to call it quackery", these concertos were immediately popular with the musical public; in England John Walsh produced multiple reprints and they were re-engraved in Paris specifically for the French market. Hawkins claimed that the second set, based on the six da camera sonatas of Corelli's collection, "having no fugues and consisting altogether of airs, afforded him but little scope for the exercise of his skill, and met with but an indifferent reception"; nevertheless these too were reissued in London, and reprinted in both Amsterdam and Paris. Geminiani followed this success by issuing twelve original concertos (Op. 2 and Op. 3, both published in 1732) before returning to Corelli in 1735 with a set of transcriptions derived, according to the title-page, from Sei Sonate del Opera Terza (but in fact including one sonata from Op. 1). This selection contained a substantial number of fugal movements, so Hawkins' observations may have been taken to heart.
The series of publications under the title of Select Harmony issued by Walsh and Hare began in 1730 with XII Concertos in Six Parts…Collected from the Works of Antonio Vivaldi, a selection from his Opp. 6, 7, 8 and 9, all of them already available in print. A second collection with the same title followed in 1732 "being 12 Concerto's collected from the latest Opera of Albinoni in 7 parts", again utilizing pre-existing publications of his Opp. 5 and 7. For the third collection Walsh adopted a serial approach, issuing single Select Concertos on a monthly basis in 1734; the title-page of the first concerto, by Giacomo Facco, an Italian composer resident in Madrid, promised that the series would "be continued Monthly with a well chosen Concerto from the Works of the most Eminent Italian Authors at 1s. 6d. each". The next three issues (between February 28 and April 4) contained the present concertos by Geminiani, after which the monthly plan seems to have been aborted and the individual concertos were absorbed into a single volume, Select Harmony Third Collection – six concertos described as "Compos'd by Sigr Geminiani, and other Eminent Italian Authors. Engraven in a fair Character and Carefully Corrected". Other than Facco (no. 6 in the new arrangement) it is unclear which other Italian authors were involved; the first of the set is anonymous, while the fifth concerto had already managed to appear spuriously as part of the first issue of Handel's Op. 3 collection, before reappearing anonymously in Select Harmony. Geminiani's works, in an altered sequence, became nos. 2-4 and the whole was announced as "Just publish'd" at the beginning of June 1735.
Geminiani produced forty-seven concertos in total, including his expansions of his own solo sonatas and Corelli's solos and trios. All save his last two concertos are scored in many parts (usually a quartet of soloists and three-part tutti) with additional parts in some instances for wind instruments. Only the two Unison Concertos, published by John Johnson in 1761 less than a year before the composer's death, deviate from this pattern; not only do they resolutely restrict themselves to two parts in all save a few bars, they also have no known earlier existence as solos. They do not exhibit any of that "artificial contexture of the parts for which Geminiani is so justly admired" to quote John Mainwaring, with only the most straightforward patterns of imitation (Concerto II, first movement) and nothing more technically exacting from the composer than an ostinato bass (Concerto II, Andante).
The six sonatas of Opus 5 are Geminiani's only solo works for cello, and were rapidly followed by his own adaptation of all six for violin. Both versions appeared in 1746, first in Paris, later in the Hague and (after some apparent commercial chicanery) in London. From the small number of surviving copies (RISM lists only five copies of the cello version, and eleven of the violin), they do not appear to have achieved the high sales of his earlier sonatas and concertos, maybe because of their technical difficulty and "fantastical" style. However since the 20th century their status has risen perhaps more than any other opus of Geminiani, evidenced by more than one printed edition and several facsimile reissues of original prints.