BAROQUE CONCERTO. J S Bach 4 Harpsichords Concerto BWV 1065 after A Vivaldi. George Frideric Händel - Concerto grosso in A minor op. 6 No. 4 [1739] Locatelli Pietro Antonio - " Concerto I in Re maggiore " op.III. The Baroque Concerto. It has often been said, and not without reason, that baroque music began in Italy. The Baroque Period saw the resurgence of Rome as the Catholic Center of the world, after a long period of decline. Money poured into the City Coffers, artists and sculptors worked to make the Eternal City the living, open-air museum it is today. In music too we can look to Italy for the origins both of the sonata and the concerto – and more precisely, we can single out Arcangelo Corelli.
With his famous Concerti Grossi, 1714, Corelli established the concerto form as a composition for multiple players, in which a smaller group of instrumentalists (concertino), is set against the larger orchestra (ripieno), the two taking the theme and its development in alternation. This idea is the continuation of an older Italian church tradition, that of 'antiphonal' singing of verse and response 'echoing' one another.
This wealth of musical development did not go unnoticed in the rest of Europe.