Buon Natale

Arcangelo Corelli was born thirty years before Bach, and although his compositions for strings suffer a bit in comparison--the Corelli Sonatas for violin and continuo are delightful, but they're like études as compared to the Bach solo partitas and sonatas--he is still a sentimental favorite. You might not choose any work of his to listen to on your last night on earth, but if you had to pick just one composer to listen to for the rest of your life, you could do worse. He lived just as the modern string instruments were overtaking their older forms, and he did as much as any other musician or composer to define what a violin should sound like. That is as true of a Mozart concerto as it is of the Knee Plays in Einstein on the Beach. Bach, by the way, was a fan; Corelli was one of his major Italian influences, which you hear not only in the solo works, but in the chamber music--perhaps especially in the chamber music.

Posting will be light for a few days. Here is the full Corelli Concerto Grosso No. 8, "fatto per la notte di Natale":