Sinfonia

What it means

Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony, but in older music it designates several things. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it means an instrumental piece within a vocal work — the introduction of a cantata, an interlude in an opera or an oratorio. At the same time it is the name for the three-part Italian opera overture with the sequence fast–slow–fast. From this form the independent symphony developed. Alongside this, a collection of three-voice keyboard pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach carries this title.

Musical use

For performance practice it is important to check the context: a sinfonia at the beginning of a cantata is an independent orchestral movement that prepares mood and key; Bach's cantata for the town council election Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir, BWV 29 (1731), for instance, opens with a sinfonia in which the organ plays as soloist the prelude from the Partita in E major for violin, BWV 1006. A sinfonia in opera bridges a scene or accompanies an event on stage. The three-part opera sinfonia, particularly widespread in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries among Italian composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, is consequential for music history, because its movement sequence passed into the Classical symphony, which was then expanded by a dance movement.

Bach's fifteen three-voice sinfonias, BWV 787–801, follow in the fair copy of 1723 the same key sequence as the two-part Inventions. According to Bach's preface they are meant to teach how to deal correctly with three obbligato parts, to acquire a cantabile manner of playing, and to gain a foretaste of composition. With the orchestral genre they share only the name. In Bach's Partita No. 2 for keyboard in C minor, the opening movement is headed Sinfonia.

Performance practice

With a sinfonia in a vocal work, clarify its function: if it stands as an introduction, shape it as a preparation of what follows and not as a concert piece. Watch scoring and continuo practice. With the three-voice keyboard pieces, what holds for the Inventions holds: work out voices individually, make motif entries audible, use little pedal.

In catalogues the title easily leads to confusion: the same designation stands for an orchestral movement in a vocal work, for the Italian opera overture, and for three-voice keyboard pieces. Always check the context before assuming scoring or scope.