The vast majority of violin sonatas from Vivaldi's time, including those of Vivaldi himself, have come down to us in the form of a score employing two staves: one for violin, and one for bass. This guarantees that, although portions of the work may be missing, what survives is textually complete. Exceptionally, five of Vivaldi's violin sonatas are preserved solely in a partbook for violin held by the Diözesanarchiv, Graz, the complementary part for cello having disappeared. The sonatas appear to date from the period between the Dresden group (1716-1717) and the Manchester set (c. 1726). Three of the sonatas, which all have four movements, possess partial concordances in other sources, with which they share two or three movements,but two of them - RV 11 and RV 37 - have so far been found only in Graz (with the exception of an incipit for RV 11 found in a contemporary thematic catalogue). This critical edition makes these two works available for study and performance. The bass part is an editorial reconstruction, and there is in addition a realization of the continuo by the editor. |
