Gene McTavish, age 15, of Miami, Fla., for his question:
JUST WHAT IS A CONCERTO?
A concerto is a musical composition. Typically it is in three movements or sections and it is written for one or more solo instruments with an orchestral accompaniment. Here's how you pronounce the word: kon cher toe.
The musical title "concerto" was first used in Italy in the 16th century, at the beginning of the Baroque era in Italy. At first concerto and the related adjective "concertato" referred to a mixture of instrumental tone, colors, voices, or both, and were applied to a wide variety of sacred and secular pieces that called for a mixed group of instruments, singers or both. The group could be treated either as a unified but mixed ensemble, or as contrasting sounds set in opposition to one another.
A specific category of concerto arose for the first time in the late 17th century. Called concerto grosso, it originated with a leading violinist and composer of the time named Arcangelo Corelli. His concerts had movements of contrasting meter and tempo.
The concerto grosso spawned a subcategory called solo concerto, in which there was a single solo instrument, thereby increasing the contrast between the solo and orchestra.
In the mid 18th century, the classical concerto evolved. The newly prominent piano gradually supplanted the violin as the preferred concerto solo instrument.
After 1820, few composers wrote more than two or three concertos, each usually intended for as specific virtuoso performer. The "supernatural" violin playing of the Italian virtuoso Niccolo Paganini, soon emulated by the Hungarian pianist composer Franz Liszt, helped establish the concert mystique of the virtuoso genius.
Important concertos, mostly for piano or violin, were written by Liszt, the German composers Carl Maria von Weber, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms; the Polish French composer Frederic Chopin; and the Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.
The works of the great 19th century romantic era concerto composers reveal experiments both in the large plan of three movements and in their internal forms. Nevertheless, they remained basically symphonic in origin and the solo and orchestra were nearly always treated in a dramatic opposition that usually led to eventual synthesis.
There was a new musical approach in the early 20th century but the soloists continued usually to be pianists or violinists. Inspired composers included Austrians Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern; Paul Hindemith, a German; Bela Bartok, a Hungarian; and the Russian born Igor Stravinsky.
Each concerto was approached as an individual problem of form, often affected by the composer's study of past styles, but seldom determined by them.
A renewed taste for clear, contrasting sounds and contrapuntal textures led to a revival of interest in the old concerto grosso. These same composers wrote a variety of such works, using the many contrasting tone colors of both symphony and chamber orchestras.