A pioneer to romanticism era with chaconne

"Chaconne" is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era.

Chaconne is a variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, usually in triple meter, eight measures in length (Consider a guitar code being repeated). Bach's Chaconne in D minor for solo violin is popular, but chaconne of Tomaso Antonio Vitali, a composer in the baroque era in Italy, is also loved by many people. This is because of the appeal of the grim musical motif as if a person is faced with a challenge against death.

However, it is arguable if Vitali's chaconne is actually his own. One of the reasons is that it is different from the typical style in the baroque era. The issue in question is modulation. The music heightens in the latter half, with the modulation freely changing like music in the romantic era. As the baroque music has limited rules under which modulation moves, Vitali's chaconne could have been heard as innovative or else strange.

Besides, there is uncertain literary evidence that it is Vitali's. On the sheet reads "Tomaso Vitalino's part" and it is doubtful if it means Vitalino composed it or whether Vitalino refers to Tomaso Antonio Vitali.

It was later identified as being in the hand of Jacob Lindner, a known copyist who was working in the same era as Vitali. This means that at least the music was not made after the baroque era and wrongly transformed. Vitali was an active musician when Linder was alive, which raises the possibility that Vitalino refers to Vitali. Then was Vitali a pioneer who foresaw the romanticism era?

At her solo concert at the IBK Chamber Hall in Seoul Arts Center on Thursday, violinist Kim Da-mi, the winner of the 2012 Hanover Concours in Germany, will perform Vitali's chaconne along with Giuseppe Tartini's violin sonata in G minor Devil's Trill. The audience can appreciate the progressive modulations this day.

유윤종 기자gustav@donga.com