Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 Fantasias for solo violin were written in 1735, when he was perhaps at the height of his fame. He also wrote sets of 12 solo works for other instruments, and these violin pieces were above all commercial enterprises. They are not fantasias in the usual sense, but multi-movement works in the Italian sonata manner, although the fast-slow-fast pattern is just one of several employed. They split the differences among Italianate sonata styles, the rising galant sound, and German fugal polyphony, each ...
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Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 Fantasias for solo violin were written in 1735, when he was perhaps at the height of his fame. He also wrote sets of 12 solo works for other instruments, and these violin pieces were above all commercial enterprises. They are not fantasias in the usual sense, but multi-movement works in the Italian sonata manner, although the fast-slow-fast pattern is just one of several employed. They split the differences among Italianate sonata styles, the rising galant sound, and German fugal polyphony, each of which is artfully boiled down to violin lines that are considerably closer to the reach of amateur violinists than were the Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin, composed 15 years earlier. This kind of smoothing down of styles into something easy to grasp and broadly accessible is pure Telemann, and you could jump in and sample anywhere to get the flavor of the whole. The music is not really in the tradition of virtuoso solo violin that Bach drew on, and there's a bit of...
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