Howling Monster, Noble Art: Italian Sonatas in Early Eighteenth-Century London

Italian musicians flocked to London in the first decades of the eighteenth century to fulfill the English demand for their music. There they encountered two distinct scenes: the Italian opera, a spectacle of virtuosic singing and moral scandal; and amateur societies that revered the instrumental music of Arcangelo Corelli. This lecture-recital explores the careers and music of Francesco Geminiani, Francesco Barsanti, and Giuseppe Sammartini, three immigrants who carved out distinct niches beyond the opera house. To do so, they each developed new strategies of branding, entrepreneurship, and institutional affiliation. Their sonatas for violin, recorder, and oboe, heard alongside their biographies and cultural context, show these strategies at work.