An accomplished clinical operations executive, Dr. Mark Paskewitz draws upon more than two decades of experience in his position as a vice president of clinical operations for a clinical research firm in Los Angeles. Outside of his professional life, Dr. Mark Paskewitz pursues a diverse range of hobbies that includes reading about politics, visiting art galleries, and listening to classical music. He is especially interested in the Baroque period and composers such as Arcangelo Corelli.
A Baroque composer born near Bologna, Italy, in 1653, Corelli’s childhood remains a mystery to scholars. By the 1680s, he had established himself as a well-known violinist and music teacher in Rome who had built his reputation through performances for Sweden’s Queen Christina and other notable figures of the period. In addition to being a popularizer of the violin, which was a fairly new instrument at the time, Corelli became indelibly linked with a type of orchestral music known as the concerto grosso.
The Baroque era saw the rise of a new form of orchestral music, the concerto. Though all concerti involved small groups of individual musicians playing with a full orchestra, the rules of the new compositional form were fluid in its early days. While some concerti featured a single soloist playing alongside a full orchestra (generally known as a solo concerto), Corelli and others began experimenting with writing concertos for multiple soloists playing with an orchestra, known as a concerto grosso.
Though scholars don’t credit Corelli with inventing the concerto grosso, his enormous reputation in European music circles helped it become an accepted form, and throughout the first half of the 18th century composers such as Handel wrote some of their greatest works by employing the concerto grosso form. Though the form had lost favor to the solo concerto by the 1750s, composers such as Leonard Bernstein returned to the concerto grosso during the 20th century.
A Baroque composer born near Bologna, Italy, in 1653, Corelli’s childhood remains a mystery to scholars. By the 1680s, he had established himself as a well-known violinist and music teacher in Rome who had built his reputation through performances for Sweden’s Queen Christina and other notable figures of the period. In addition to being a popularizer of the violin, which was a fairly new instrument at the time, Corelli became indelibly linked with a type of orchestral music known as the concerto grosso.
The Baroque era saw the rise of a new form of orchestral music, the concerto. Though all concerti involved small groups of individual musicians playing with a full orchestra, the rules of the new compositional form were fluid in its early days. While some concerti featured a single soloist playing alongside a full orchestra (generally known as a solo concerto), Corelli and others began experimenting with writing concertos for multiple soloists playing with an orchestra, known as a concerto grosso.
Though scholars don’t credit Corelli with inventing the concerto grosso, his enormous reputation in European music circles helped it become an accepted form, and throughout the first half of the 18th century composers such as Handel wrote some of their greatest works by employing the concerto grosso form. Though the form had lost favor to the solo concerto by the 1750s, composers such as Leonard Bernstein returned to the concerto grosso during the 20th century.
