Innocentio Vivarino

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Innocentio Vivarino was born c. 1575 in Adria in the Veneto region of Northern Italy. He seems to have spent his whole life in his native town, active as organist and music teacher until his death in 1626. From about 1592 he served the Confraternità del SS. Crocefisso, where sacred dramas were performed as fostered by the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation. In 1602 he was appointed first organist at the cathedral. Of his musical output only two works have survived: a collection of madrigals, Madrigali concertati a due e tre voci, et a voce con violini, e sinfonie per cantar nel clavicembalo, chittarone o altro simile stromento, Op. 6 (Venice, 1624); and Il primo libro de motetti (Venice, 1620). The latter contains eight sonatas for violin “or a similar instrument”. Despite their brevity (none of the sonatas is more than 60 whole notes long) and their stereotypical tripartite form comprising duple-, triple-, and duple-meter sections, they attract our attention as being among the first sonatas for solo violin and continuo. Furthermore, they all have a fully integrated continuo bass taking part in contrapuntal and imitative interplay with the violin. Their texture is more like duo sonatas (sonatas a2) than solo sonatas. They may have served, together with the solo motets of the collection, as interludes in dramatic performances or as additions or substitutes in the liturgy of the mass and Vespers. For Vivarino as music teacher they may have also served a pedagogical function

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