Kammerorchester Basel . Paul Goodwin

For most of the Baroque period, the major European countries each had their own musical tradition, with quite distinct stylistic features and preferences for particular genres. Italy, where baroque music was born in the early seventeenth century, naturally remained the epicentre of musical Europe. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) set new standards in the main instrumental genres, including the violin and trio sonata. In his twelve Concerti Grossi opus 6, published posthumously by Estienne Roger in Amsterdam in 1714, he initiated a real craze. Several composers who heard Corelli perform these concertos wrote similar works as soon as they reached home, so that around 1700 the concerto grosso became quite simply the most popular orchestral genre. England was especially subject to this Corelli rage in the early eighteenth century, mainly because Corelli's student Geminiani showed himself to be an ardent champion of his teacher while he was there. Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759) took grateful advantage of this trend in his colourfully orchestrated Concerti Grossi opus 3. By contrast, in France it was the orchestral suite that dominated, its main practitioners being Jean-Baptiste Lully and above all Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). Georg Philipp Telemann's 'Tafelmusik' included examples of both French-inspired suites and Italian-inspired concerti.