concertato style

concertato style, musical style characterized by the interaction of two or more groups of instruments or voices. The term is derived from the Italian concertare, “concerted,” which implies that a heterogeneous group of performers is brought together in a harmonious ensemble. The advent of the concertato style took place in Venice during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. There the polychoral music (using two or more choirs) of Andrea Gabrieli and Giovanni Gabrieli made frequent use of the alternation between various combinations of singers and instrumentalists, thus producing novel antiphonal effects (i.e., of alternating groups of performers) in the spacious cathedral of St. Mark. These compositions (which were occasionally entitled concerti) demonstrate those traits—simple homophonic (essentially chordal) texture, strong declamatory rhythm, and the varied alternation and combination of blocks of sound—that became prominent in Baroque instrumental and choral music.

The concertato style continued throughout the early 17th century and is exemplified by the choral works of the Italians Lodovico Viadana, Adriano Banchieri, and Orazio Benevoli; the German Heinrich Schütz; and others. The aesthetic of this style was taken over in the purely instrumental mid-Baroque concerto grosso, in which a large body of players (ripieno, or tutti) alternates with a small group of soloists (concertino).