The previously mentioned proposals and attempts have mainly aimed at identifying the portions of Corelli’s music which might have been his lost Sinfonie with trumpets. My perspective is different, and my artistic research has another purpose. Instead of looking to revive specific works, I am aiming at recreating a sound: the fact that, most likely, some of the Corelli’s concertos Opus 6 were conceived many years before their publication has the implication that some portions of them were probably heard as Sinfonie in Rome at the end of the XVII century. A logical consequence of this is that at least a few of their movements might have included trumpets. Despite these assumptions, however, I take it for granted that it is not possible to identify which parts of these works included brass instruments, nor do I claim that it is possible to determine what music the trumpets played alongside these works. 48 As a result, I have not tried to adapt Corelli’s musical text to the trumpets’ technical possibilities by any kind of tonal transposition nor by any kind of “simplification”. Neither did I seek for passages of the Concerto Grosso suitable for the trumpets to play. Free from these constraints, and once accepted that we cannot argue that a specific composition was a Sinfonia that included trumpets, I have set my goal in recreating a soundscape similar to the one heard when Corelli was conducting his Sinfonie with trumpets. To achieve that goal, I have looked through Corelli’s orchestral music and I have selected the works that seemed to me the most appropriate to have an addition of trumpet parts on top of them. 49
This perspective has been my starting point in order to recreate an aural experience in which we could hear, today, music featuring trumpets that would sound in the style of the lost Sinfonie and that would make use of the brass in accordance with the practice of the time. In other words, my aim was to perform a composition never heard before in that specific form, but indeed close in sound and style to the ones that have not come to us in score. In order to pursue this aim, I have chosen three concertos from Opus 6 which seemed most suitable for the addition of trumpets, and I have sought a way to integrate these instruments, with newly composed parts, into their score. 50
Taking the Concertos of Opus 6 as a starting point for the reconstruction of the soundscape of Corelli’s Sinfonie with trumpets, seems appropriate for several reasons, the first one being their close resemblance to the only genuine Corelli’s Sinfonia survived: the “Introduzione e Sinfonia” of the oratorio “Santa Beatrice d’Este” by Giovan Lorenzo Lulier.
