6 Concertos op. 3, Second Edition

Geminiani’s six Concertos Op. 3 were first published in 1732 by John Walsh, in London; the next year, the Amsterdam music printer and publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène issued a revision by the composer, with added ornamentation, articulation and dynamics. In 1751 a new edition was published in London, ‘printed for the Author by John Johnson’.

This new version was based on the Walsh edition and included - again - added ornamentation and articulation, different tempo marks, and other changes in detail initiated by the composer. Despite this plethora of additions and changes, the 1751 edition was not to be Geminiani’s final thoughts on the Op. 3 Concertos. In 1755, a new edition was published in Paris, not in parts as previously, but in score. No copy of this publication is known to be extant, but it is mentioned by Ernst Ludwig Gerber in the article on Geminiani in his Neues historisch-biographisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1812).

The title pages of the British issues of the ‘Second Edition’ of the Op. 3 Concertos state that the concertos were ‘Revised, Corrected, and Enlarged, by the Author’. This is something of an understatement: there are innumerable changes from the 1732-1751 versions, including additions to some movements. From time to time the changes are so radical that the affected movements could be described as newly composed.