The concerto ripieno was sometimes referred to as a "concerto a quattro" (or "a cinque" if the orchestra included two viola parts, a standard scoring in the 17th century) and was a composition for the ripieno alone (i.e. for string orchestra and continuo), with either no solo parts or clearly subsidiary ones.
The more modern sinfonia type was firmly established in Torelli's second publication to include concertos, Op.
4 (1699), which turn to the three-movement (fast-slow-fast) pattern and more homophonic texture familiar to us from the solo concerto and opera sinfonia.
The sinfonia type gradually merged with the early concert symphony beginning in the 1720s, doubtless in part because the term concerto was by that time acquiring an indelible association with the notion of tutti-solo contrast.
Best known through Bartók's popular work of 1943, other examples include those by Hindemith (1925), Walter Piston (1933), Zoltán Kodály (1939–40), Michael Tippett (1962–63), and Elliott Carter (1969).