Draft:Peter Charles Allsop
British musicologist (1946–2025)
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Peter Charles Allsop (1946 – 28 March 2025) was a British musicologist and Reader in Musicology at the University of Exeter, specialising in seventeenth-century Italian instrumental music and, in the later phase of his career, the transmission of European Baroque music to China. He was the author of four monographs, published by Oxford University Press, Ashgate Publishing, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and founded New Orpheus Editions, a Crediton-based press dedicated to critical editions of early Italian instrumental music. His scholarship concentrated on the trio sonata, Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Battista Buonamente, and the Italian missionary Teodorico Pedrini, and engaged critically with long-standing historiographical assumptions about the development of the Baroque sonata.
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Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Siganushiga (talk) 21:50, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
Peter Charles Allsop | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 |
| Died | 28 March 2025 (aged 79) Devon, England |
| Occupations | Musicologist; academic editor |
| Employer | University of Exeter |
| Known for | Scholarship on seventeenth-century Italian instrumental music; studies of Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Battista Buonamente, and Teodorico Pedrini; professorships at the Central Conservatory of Music and China Conservatory of Music, Beijing |
| Spouse | Rosemary Allsop (d. 2018) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (DPhil) |
Life
Originally trained as a violinist, Allsop studied music in London and Bologna before reading for his doctorate at the University of Oxford, where his doctoral thesis addressed seventeenth-century Italian instrumental music.[1] He subsequently joined the University of Exeter as a tutor in its Department of Music, eventually rising to Reader in Musicology, a position he held for many years. He also served as a session chair at the Royal Musical Association's 34th Research Students' Conference, hosted by the University of Exeter in December 2000.[2]
He was also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Music, where he is identified as Reader in Musicology at the University of Exeter and noted for his authorship of The Italian 'Trio' Sonata (1992) and Arcangelo Corelli: New Orpheus of Our Times (1999) and for his extensive editions of that repertory.[3]
While preparing his biography of Arcangelo Corelli, Allsop discovered that Corelli's music had been introduced to the Chinese imperial court by the Italian Vincentian missionary and composer Teodorico Pedrini (1671–1746). This discovery redirected the later phase of his career toward the intersection of European Baroque music and the history of Catholic missions to China. From 2007, supported by two substantial Leverhulme Research Fellowships, he taught Historical Musicology and Performance Practice at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and subsequently at the China Conservatory of Music.[1] He was also identified as Visiting Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in conjunction with a public lecture co-delivered with Joyce Lindorff at the University of Southern California.[4]
Outside his academic career, Allsop served for many years as choirmaster at St Swithun's Church in Sandford, Devon, where he lived from 1978.[5][6]
Allsop died suddenly on 28 March 2025, aged 78.[7]
Scholarship
Intellectual focus
Allsop's scholarly project centred on two related aims: to provide a comprehensive, source-based account of Italian instrumental ensemble music before Corelli, and to challenge what he regarded as a historiographically distorted picture of how the Baroque sonata developed. In particular, he argued against the teleological view of Corelli as the inevitable culmination of earlier seventeenth-century practice, contending instead that Corelli's works were the product of specific regional interactions rather than a universal evolutionary process.[8]
A related concern was the genre classification sonata da chiesa. Allsop argued that the term was rarely used by Italian composers of the period, including Corelli himself, who never applied it to his own works, and that its widespread adoption as a category reflects a northern European Protestant interpretive framework imposed on Italian practice. He developed this argument in a 1997 article and elaborated on it in his Corelli monograph, substituting the designation "free sonata" for the traditional sonata da chiesa.[9][10]
His later work moved beyond Italian Baroque repertory entirely. While preparing his Corelli biography, he discovered that Teodorico Pedrini, the Italian Vincentian missionary at the Qing imperial court, had introduced Corelli's music to China. This led to a sustained research programme on Pedrini's musical and diplomatic activities in Beijing, resulting in a co-authored journal article, a public lecture series with Joyce Lindorff of Temple University, and a final monograph published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2023, funded by two Leverhulme Research Fellowships.[1]
His third monograph extended the revisionist project further back in time, arguing for Giovanni Battista Buonamente as a canonical figure in the Italian violin tradition. He contended that Buonamente's structural sophistication and range of genres prefigured Corelli's achievement, and that his influence on Marco Uccellini and subsequent Modenese composers had been systematically underestimated.[11]
New Orpheus Editions
In parallel with his monograph writing, Allsop founded and ran New Orpheus Editions, based in Crediton, Devon, through which he published critical editions of seventeenth-century Italian instrumental music. Documented editions include:
- Bartolomeo Laurenti, Suonate per camera, nos. 1–6: à violino, e violoncello, Op. 1 (1691). Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1993.
- Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Sonate da camera: à tre, Op. III (1695). Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1993.
- Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, Simfonie a 3 [in G, G and A], ed. Allsop. Italian Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music, Series I: Rome, i. Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1990.[12][13]
Publications
Books
- Allsop, Peter (1992). The Italian 'Trio' Sonata: From Its Origins Until Corelli. Oxford Monographs on Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816229-2.
- The first comprehensive study of Italian instrumental ensemble music of the seventeenth century based on the majority of surviving primary sources. The book covers all major composers of Italian trio sonatas before Corelli, and presents Corelli's works not as an inevitable culmination of prior history but as the outcome of an interaction between two distinct regional traditions.
- Allsop, Peter (1999). Arcangelo Corelli: 'New Orpheus of Our Times'. Oxford Monographs on Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816562-0.
- The first full-length English-language study of Corelli for forty years, offering a reassessment of the composer's life and works grounded in extensive archival research. Allsop challenges the received view, stemming from Charles Burney and John Hawkins, of Corelli as a consolidator of past trends rather than an originator of new ones, and argues that his allegiance to the Roman School is central to understanding his output. Reviewed in the Journal of the American Musicological Society (2002).[14]
- Allsop, Peter (2005). Cavalier Giovanni Battista Buonamente: Franciscan Violinist. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84014-627-1.
- A monograph on Giovanni Battista Buonamente (c. 1600–1642), arguing for his significance as a canonical figure in the Italian violin tradition, in direct contrast to the Corellian norm. Allsop traces a line of stylistic influence from Salamone Rossi through Buonamente to Marco Uccellini, and provides detailed analyses of Buonamente's sinfonias, free sonatas, variation sets, canzonas, and dances. He argues that Buonamente was the first Italian composer to cultivate the ensemble suite to any substantial extent. Reviewed in Music and Letters (2006)[15] and Early Music (2006).[16]
- Allsop, Peter (2023). Teodorico Pedrini and the Ruin of the Christian Mission to China. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-9136-3.
- A study of Teodorico Pedrini (1671–1746), the Italian Vincentian missionary who served at the Qing imperial court in Beijing and introduced Corelli's music to China. Drawing on almost 2,000 pages of Pedrini's correspondence, the book reassesses his role in the Chinese Rites controversy, arguing that neither the papal decisions of 1704 nor Pedrini's own actions were the decisive factors in the eventual proscription of Christian preaching in China in 1724. The research was funded by two Leverhulme Research Fellowships.
Journal articles
- Allsop, Peter; Lindorff, Joyce (2008). "Teodorico Pedrini: The Music and Letters of an 18th-century Missionary in China". Vincentian Heritage Journal. 27 (2).
- Allsop, Peter (1997). "Sonata da chiesa: a Case of Mistaken Identity?". The Consort. 53 (1): 4–14.
- Allsop, Peter (2002). "In Defence of Arcangelo Corelli: New Orpheus of Our Times". Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music. 8 (1). [Response to a review by Gregory Barnett, JSCM 6/2 (2000).]
Editions (New Orpheus Editions, Crediton)
- Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, Simfonie a 3 [in G, G and A], ed. Allsop. Italian Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music, Series I: Rome, i. Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1990.
- Bartolomeo Laurenti, Suonate per camera, nos. 1–6: à violino, e violoncello, Op. 1 (1691). Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1993.
- Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Sonate da camera: à tre, Op. III (1695). Crediton: New Orpheus Editions, 1993.
Reception
Allsop's work received sustained attention in the principal journals of the field. His Corelli monograph was described by the Journal of the American Musicological Society as "a substantial contribution to our knowledge of an important and oddly neglected composer."[13] His Buonamente volume was praised in Early Music for its "exhaustive" information and for bringing "much new information to the table",[17] and Early Music Review called it "a very thorough study... it does its job very well."[11] Michael Talbot, reviewing the same volume in Music and Letters, described Buonamente as "exceptional both for the unusually large dimensions of his compositions and, fortunately, for the skill with which he organizes their thematic material."[18]
His 2002 response to Gregory Barnett's review of the Corelli book in the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music is notable for its sustained defence of the terminological and historical arguments at stake, particularly the question of whether sonata da chiesa constituted a meaningful functional category for Italian composers of the period.[9]