Andrea Soldi (1703-71), Portrait of Francesco Geminiani. Image courtesy of the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, The Foundling Museum

Francesco Geminiani

Opera Omnia

Critical Edition

General Editor:
Christopher Hogwood

Advisory Committee:

Clive Brown (University of Leeds), Enrico Careri (University of Naples), Kate Eckersley (University of Oxford), Christopher Hogwood (University of Cambridge - Chairman), Peter Holman (University of Leeds), Sandra Mangsen (University of Western Ontario), Richard Maunder (University of Cambridge), Fulvia Morabito (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca), Rudolf Rasch (University of Utrecht), Robin Stowell (University of Cardiff), Michael Talbot (University of Liverpool), Peter Walls (Victoria University of Wellington), Christoph Wolff (Harvard University), Neal Zaslaw (Cornell University)

In collaboration with:

• Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini Onlus
• Ad Parnassum. A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music

Editorial Plan

Published Volumes

[Music] may be said to have reached its perfection, when the perfections of harmony
& melody came to be united. This age of perfection may be said to have commenced
with Corelli, & to have been carried on most eminently by Handel & Geminiani.
(James Harris to John Hawkins, 31 December 1753)

Handel, Geminiani & Corelli were the sole Divinities of my Youth
(Charles Burney to Thomas Twining, 14 December 1781)

Of all the leading composers of the 18th century, only Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) is lacking a complete critical edition of his music and writings. Although held to be the equal of Corelli in his own day - and indeed thought by some to be superior to his contemporary Handel in instrumental composition - a surprisingly large proportion of his compositions have never been reissued since his lifetime, and with the exception of a few solo sonatas and his treatises on “good taste“ and violin playing, Geminiani is largely ignored by the baroque taste of the present day.

The lack of availability of his music in scrupulous modern editions designed for practical performance has concealed the enormous originality he showed both in writing and re-writing his own music, and that of his teacher, Corelli. His adaptations and re-workings have never to date been presented fully and in a form that allows for pertinent comparison, and the majority of his music has not been revisited by musicologists for the last half century.

Francesco Geminiani Opera Omnia will present all his works, instrumental, vocal and didactic, in full critical editions, with the composer’s first versions, revisions and re-workings presented consecutively by opus number, including a full critical commentary and facsimiles, together with complete performance material for the orchestral and chamber works. The didactic treatises issued in English will be accompanied by Italian, French or German translations of the period, where these exist, together with full commentaries from modern authorities.

It is planned to have all volumes of the edition available in both library volumes and practical performing versions by 2012, the 250th anniversary of Geminiani’s death (and 325th of his birth).

Christopher Hogwood
Cambridge University, 2008

© Marco Borggreve