divendres, 30 de desembre del 2022

CROFT, William (1678-1727) - Suite in c

Unknown artist - William Croft


William Croft (1678-1727) - Suite in c
Performers: Cοlin Bοοth (harpsichord)

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English organist and composer. He was a chorister in the Chapel Royal under Blow, of whom, as appears from verses prefixed to Amphion anglicus (1700), he was not only a pupil but a protégé. He was also deeply influenced by Purcell, many of whose works he must have performed and certainly preserved in manuscript copies from the 1690s. There is no reason to reject the probability that he is the ‘Phillip Crofts’ mentioned in the parish archives of St Anne’s Church, Soho, as organist from 1700. In that year he renewed his connection with the Chapel Royal as Gentleman Extraordinary, sharing that post, together with the reversion of a place as organist, with Jeremiah Clarke. In May 1704 they jointly succeeded Francis Pigott as organist of the chapel, and when Clarke died in 1707 the whole place fell to Croft. His anthems in celebration of the battles of Blenheim and Ramillies show that he was already by then supplementing Blow’s duties as a composer, and on Blow’s death in 1708 he followed him not only as composer, Tuner of the Regals and Organs, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal but also as organist of Westminster Abbey. Rather curiously, at some time before 1712, he paid for the restoration of the monument in Norwich Cathedral to William Inglott. In 1712 he relinquished his post at St Anne’s. In July 1713 Croft took the Oxford degree of DMus, being the earliest Oxford graduate in music relating to whom there survives solid extended work submitted for the degree; this took the form of two odes for solo voices, chorus and orchestra, With noise of cannon and Laurus cruentas, celebrating the Treaty of Utrecht, and published as Musicus apparatus academicus. Croft was the senior Chapel Royal composer at the time when Handel began to find favour with Queen Anne, and even though there is no evidence of friction it is not impossible that this imposing volume may have seemed a means of maintaining the native composer’s standing.

In 1715 his stipend as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal was increased by £80 a year, his duties to include teaching the boys reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as organ playing and composition. From around this time until his death he enjoyed the patronage of Sir John Dolben of Finedon, Northamptonshire, sub-dean of the Chapel Royal (1712-17). Croft broke new ground in 1724 by the publication of a handsome two-volume collection of his church music, entitled Musica sacra (seeillustration), engraved and in the form of a score rather than in parts, the advantages of which he cogently urged in his preface. A copy of his ‘Proposals’ to subscribers is now in the New York Public Library. A list dated 1726 shows that Croft was one of the earliest members of the Academy of Vocal Music. He married in 1705, but died childless and was buried close to Purcell in Westminster Abbey. Hawkins (History, ii, 797) described him as a ‘grave and decent man’, and the imposing format of his two chief publications together with the nature of his music indicates that he took his position seriously. As a composer Croft was both a staunch preserver of tradition and an assimilator of new techniques. Many of his works were modelled on specific compositions by Purcell; yet there is evidence that he revised his own Te Deum in D, which was clearly based on Purcell’s 1694 composition, after having heard Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ setting of 1713. Enough of Croft’s songs and instrumental music is dated to justify the view that these branches of composition did not occupy him much after his third decade. His string pieces for the theatre are agreeable if not specially noteworthy, while his harpsichord music is smoother and more regularly turned than that of Blow, with whom Croft, together with others of Blow’s scholars, combined in a publication of 1700.

dimecres, 28 de desembre del 2022

BOMTEMPO, João Domingos (1775-1842) - Sinfonia em Ré maior, No.2

Henrique José da Silva (1772-1834) - Retrato de João Domingos Bomtempo (1814)


João Domingos Bomtempo (1775-1842) - Sinfonia em Ré maior, No.2 (c.1820)
Performers: Nova Filharmonia Portuguesa; AIvаro Cаssuto (conductor)

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Portuguese pianist and composer. Son of the Italian oboist F.X. Bomtempo, who belonged to the royal chapel of Dom José I, he studied music with his father and was a pupil at the Patriarchal Seminary. A member of the brotherhood of St Cecilia from the age of 14, he replaced his father in the royal chapel a few years later, after the latter’s death in Brazil. But soon afterwards (1801) he left for Paris, where he became well known as a pianist and composer: his first two piano concertos and the Symphony no.1 were widely acclaimed in the Journal général de la France and the Courrier de l’Europe. His meeting and friendship with Clementi, who published many of his works, date from his first years in Paris. Because of the Napoleonic invasions he left for London in 1810, where he taught music to a daughter of the Duchess of Hamilton for a year. He returned to Lisbon in 1811 but went back to London five years later; in 1820, after another brief sojourn in Paris during which he composed the Requiem Mass in memory of Camões, he finally settled in Portugal. Besides teaching there he also organized concerts; to this end he founded the Philharmonic Society which in August 1822 initiated the first series of regular concerts in which works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were performed, as well as his own compositions. The Vilafrancada movement and the advent of the absolutist regime in 1828 interrupted the concerts and later led to the dissolution of the society itself, but the triumph of liberalism finally brought Bomtempo just reward for his abilities: in 1833 he was appointed the teacher of Dona Maria II and awarded the Order of Christ, and in 1835 he was made principal of the conservatory, which had been inaugurated the same year. He kept this position to the end of his life. Bomtempo was one of the principal reformers of Portuguese music, not only through his establishment of the conservatory, but also through the Philharmonic Society’s activities on behalf of instrumental, symphonic and chamber music, in a milieu then completely dominated by Italian opera. To Bomtempo also Portuguese music owes its first examples of native symphonies, and chamber music.

dilluns, 26 de desembre del 2022

SENKYR, Agustín (1736-1796) - Festa sanctorum celebrate (1768)

Firmin Perlin (1747-1783) - Antique hot baths with women and children bathing


Agustín Šenkýř (1736-1796) - Festa sanctorum celebrate (1768)
Performers: Cantores Pragenses; Musici de Praga; Josef Hercl (1928-2005, conductor)

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Bohemian organist and composer. Almost nothing is known about his early years. He studied at the grammar school in Broumov, where he also received musical lessons from Abbot Friedrich (?). In 1764 he took his vows with the Emmaus Benedictines in Prague and was ordained a priest a year later. Also there he took the order name of Augustin. From 1782 to 1787 he held an administrator post in Suchdol. When the chapel there was closed by imperial order, he returned to Prague where he remained the rest of his life as choir master of the Emmaus abbey. Among his students were the famous composer František Josef Dusík. As a composer, his output was mainly sacred, among them, 22 Masses, 15 Motets, 32 offertories and a Requiem. In terms of style, his music was strongly influenced by Neapolitan school as well as by music from bohemian composers such as F. X. Brixi. In his work, we can therefore expect a singing melody including elements of folk music as well as an elaborate instrumental accompaniment. Augustin Šenkýř was an important figure in Prague's musical life in the 18th century and his music was performed and praised there.

diumenge, 25 de desembre del 2022

IVANSCHIZ, Amandus (1727-1758) - Oratorium 'Tartareae abeste'

Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796) - Die Akademie mit ihren Attributen zu Füßen Minervas


⭐ Bon Nadal ⭐ Feliz Navidad ⭐ Merry Christmas ⭐ メリークリスマス ⭐ Feliz Natal ⭐ Frohe Weihnachten 
⭐ щасливого Різдва ⭐ Vrolijk kerstfeest ⭐ Joyeux Noël ⭐ Veselé Vánoce ⭐ Buon Natale 
⭐ Cчастливого Рождества ⭐ 메리 크리스마스 ⭐ Felicem Natalem Christi ⭐ Wesołych Świąt ⭐

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Amandus Ivanschiz (1727-1758) - Oratorium (C-Dur) 'Tartareae abeste' à 4 voci
Performers: Artur Janda (baritone); Chοir and orchеstra La Tеmpеsta; Jakub Burzynski (conductor)

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Austrian composer of south Slav extraction. Only fragmentary information about his life is available. He entered the Pauline order in his hometown and choose the name of Amandus likely by the end of 1742. After his novitiate in the Ranna monastery at the age of 16 (Dec. 25, 1743) he took his monastic vows. He then studied in Maria Trost and Wiener Neustadt, where he was ordained a priest on November 15, 1750. Between 1751 and 1754 he stayed in Rome as an assistant to the Procurator General of the order, from where he returned to Wiener Neustadt. In 1755 he was sent again to the Maria Trost monastery, where he died in 1758, at the young age of 31. He was evidently a prolific and popular composer: there survive about 100 works by him in manuscripts, dating mostly from 1762 to 1772 and scattered throughout the Habsburg Empire and in south Germany. His music is characteristic of the transition from late Baroque to early Classical style, and his best works are his masses and symphonies. The masses are mostly scored for four soloists, four-part choir, two violins and bass and a pair of trumpets; some are of considerable dimensions, and they show distinct Neapolitan traits. The symphonies, many of which have four movements, are scored for strings, sometimes with a pair of trumpets or horns. The trios, entitled variously ‘Divertimento’, ‘Nocturno’, ‘Sinfonia’, ‘Sonata’ and ‘Parthia’, are mostly in three movements in the same key; Ivanschiz’s frequent use of the viola as the second solo instrument is a forward-looking trait.

divendres, 23 de desembre del 2022

ROLLE, Johann Heinrich (1716-1785) - Auf, Preiset Gott Mit Vollen Chören

Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796) - Die göttliche Vorsehung und Tugenden (1765)


Johann Heinrich Rolle (1716-1785) - Auf, Preiset Gott Mit Vollen Chören
Performers: Mеlаnie Hirsch (Sopran); Marie Hеnriеtte Rеinhold (Alt); Michaеl Zаbаnoff (Tenor); Matthias Viеwеg (Bass); Kammerchor der Biеdеritzеr Kantorеi; Märkisch Barock; Michael Schοll (Leitung)

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German composer. His father, Christian Friedrich Rolle (1681-1751), wrote several Passions and some chamber music and he was among Bach's competitors for the Kantorate at the Leipzig Thomaskirche. He was Kantor at Quedlinburg until 1721, then left for a similar position in Magdeburg, where he later became city music director. J.H. Rolle received his early training from his father. He served as organist in Magdeburg from 1734. He left Magdeburg in 1737, possibly for Leipzig, where he may have continued his music studies; the claims in his autobiography, that he studied law at Leipzig and entered into legal practice in Berlin, are not supported by records at Leipzig University. In 1741 Rolle, now in Berlin, was engaged as a violinist (later violist) in Frederick the Great's chapel orchestra. There he became acquainted with the Bendas, Grauns, Quantz and C.P.E. Bach. Compositions that may come from this period include an Italian secular cantata, a setting of Metastasio's Isaaco in German translation, and the birthday cantata L'apoteoso di Romulo; Rolle's later works reveal the importance of his contact with the musicians of the Prussian court and with the operas of Hasse and C.H. Graun. At the same time, Rolle maintained strong connections with Magdeburg. In 1747 Rolle obtained his dismissal from Frederick's orchestra and returned to Magdeburg to become organist at the Johanniskirche. On his father's death in 1751 he was unanimously appointed to succeed him as city music director, a position he held until his death. Rolle's main duty in Magdeburg was to provide service music for the city's six parish churches; a large number of his cantatas and motets survive in manuscript and printed editions. He was also required to perform a Passion each year, and to present a new composition every four or five years. Eight Passion settings are mentioned in his autobiography, one based on each of the four Gospel narratives and four on newly written librettos. These works established Rolle's reputation as a composer of sacred music. 

From 1764 on, Rolle participated in a local gathering of intellectuals known most often as the Mittwochsgesellschaft, started around 1760. Out of the meetings of this group arose the idea of presenting a series of public concerts under Rolle's direction. The concerts began in 1764 (after the Seven Years War) and continued until some time after Rolle's death. Rolle presented his most important compositions, nearly 20 dramatic concert works or ‘musikalische Dramen’, at these ‘öffentliche Concerte’. Though they have most often been called oratorios, Rolle's music dramas are a hybrid genre possessing characteristics of both opera and oratorio. Their subjects are primarily, but not exclusively, biblical. Some texts show the oratorio's usual bipartite division, but others consist of one or three parts, depending on dramatic considerations; the divisions are called parts (Theile) by some librettists and acts (Handlungen) by others. Like German oratorios, Rolle's music dramas place great weight on the chorus, and they also provide the chorus with a dramatic role. Most curious (and revealing) are the stage directions in Rolle's scores and in the published editions of the librettos, indicating scenery, costuming and gestures. While there is no evidence that these works were ever staged, nothing is left to the imagination of anyone wishing to do so. Rolle was virtually alone at this time in writing biblical-historical works. His musical style, often reminiscent of Graun, includes simple melodies full of repeated diatonic patterns, square phrases, an abundance of parallel 3rds and 6ths, melodic sighs and cadential appoggiaturas. When the text becomes more violently emotional, however, the music employs disjunct melodic lines, chromaticism, sudden tonal shifts and unusual harmonies reminiscent of C.P.E. Bach. Rolle's cousin Christian Carl Rolle (1725-1788), was Kantor at the Berlin Jerusalemer Kirche; he wrote a theoretical-didactic treatise, Neue Wahrnehmung zur Aufnahme … der Musik (Berlin, 1784), including complaints about the fallen state of church music and biographies of Graun and J.F. Agricola.

dimecres, 21 de desembre del 2022

CONSTANZ, Karl (1747-1817) - Quem vidistis pastores (c.1770)

Joris van Schooten (1587-1651) - De aanbidding der koningen (1646)


Karl Constanz (1747-1817) - Offertorium de Nativitate Domini 'Quem vidistis pastores' (c.1770)
Performers: Chor und Orchester der Akademie St. Blаsius; Kаrlhеinz Siеssl (conductor)

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Austrian organist and composer. He was the son of Josef Constanz (?-1788), the organist at the Pfarrkirche St. Michael in Brixen. His early years remain unknown but he probably received music lessons from his father. In 1770, and after he was ordained a priest, he was settled in Salzburg for the next two years to enhace his musical skills playing the organ. So far it has not been possible to clarify with whom Constanz took lessons in Salzburg but he probably was closely related to Michael Haydn and the Mozarts. After his return to Brixen in 1772, he was awarded the benefit “ad omnes sanctos” and was promoted to court musician. In 1775 he succeeded the Brixen court organist Franz Hopfgartner (1714-1775) and he held this post at the Metropolitan Church of Tyrol until his death. During his long career as organist, he experienced the secularization of the Prince-Bishopric of Brixen and the associated transformation of the Prince-Bishop's court music into Brixen Cathedral Music. As a composer of church music, he achieved nationwide fame. His most widespread work, the Ave Maria in Es-dur, has survived in the music archives of Stams, Hall, Schwaz, Feldkirch and Einsiedeln. He also wrote several masses, offertories, hymns, psalms and motets, the most of them only preserved in manuscript. His brother Josef Anton Constanz (1753-?) was also organist and composer.

dilluns, 19 de desembre del 2022

RAUZZINI, Venanzio (1746-1810) - Sonata (I) in C (1786)

Unknown - A View of the Parade at Bath (c.1785)


Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) - Sonata (I) for the Piano-Forte with an Accompanyment for the Violin Adlibitum, Op.15 (1786)
Performers: Zsolt Kalló (violin); Tamás Szekendy (1961-2014, fortepiano)

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Italian soprano castrato and composer. After early studies in Rome and possibly also in Naples with Porpora, he made his début at the Teatro della Valle in Rome in Piccinni’s Il finto astrologo (7 February 1765). His first major role was in Guglielmi’s Sesostri at Venice during Ascension Fair 1766. In the same year he entered the service of the Elector Maximilian III Joseph at Munich, where he remained until 1772. He first appeared there in Traetta’s Siroe (Carnival 1767) and later that year was given leave to perform in Venice and in Vienna, where Mozart and his father heard him in Hasse’s Partenope. Burney, visiting Rauzzini in August 1772, praised his virtuosity and the quality of his voice, but was most impressed by his abilities as a composer and harpsichordist. His last known operatic performance in Munich was in Bernasconi’s Demetrio (Carnival 1772). According to Michael Kelly he was forced to leave because of difficulties with noblewomen engendered by his good looks. Rauzzini performed for two more years in Italy before moving permanently to England. Engaged for Carnival 1773 at Milan, he was primo uomo in Mozart’s Lucio Silla (26 December 1772) and in Paisiello’s Sismano nel Mogol (30 January 1773). In January Mozart wrote for him the brilliant motet Exultate, jubilate (kv165/158a). Later that year he sang at Venice and Padua, and in 1774 at Turin (Carnival) and Venice (Ascension Fair). From November 1774 to July 1777 Rauzzini sang regularly at the King’s Theatre in London, making his simultaneous début as singer and composer in the pasticcio Armida. Bingley reported that his acting in Sacchini’s Motezuma (7 February 1775) greatly impressed Garrick. Both Burney and Lord Mount Edgcumbe, however, deemed his voice sweet but too feeble, a defect Burney ascribed to Rauzzini’s devoting too much time to composition. Indeed, Rauzzini contributed arias to four other pasticcios in the season 1775-76 and wrote a comic opera, L’ali d’amore. 

Piramo e Tisbe, his best-loved opera, was first staged in London on 16 March 1775 it was revived there in three other seasons and performed at many continental theatres. In the following years many of his works, both vocal and instrumental, were published in London. Rauzzini’s singing also gradually won over London audiences. For his last London appearance in 1777 he composed an Address of Thanks, presumably the cantata La partenza ‘sung by him and Miss Storace’. In the autumn of 1777 Rauzzini took up residence in Bath, where he managed concerts by many renowned performers, among them his pupils John Braham, Nancy Storace, Charles Incledon, Mrs Billington and Mme Mara. At Dublin in 1778 he met and taught Michael Kelly and promoted his career with advice to study in Naples. In the spring of 1781, again in London, Rauzzini sang in concerts with Tenducci and others and wrote the second act of the opera L’omaggio di paesani al signore del contado. He was intermittently in London during the next three seasons to stage his operas L’eroe cinese, Creusa in Delfo and Alina, o sia La regina di Golconda, which was heavily criticized by the Public Advertiser (10 May 1784). Ballets with music by him were performed at the King’s Theatre in the season 1783-84, and he also directed the production of Sarti’s Le gelosie villane (15 April 1784). During this period a scandal arose over his claim that certain arias in Sacchini’s operas were his own. He was not in London when his incidental music for Reynold’s Werter (originally performed at Bath) was used at Covent Garden on 14 March 1786, and after the London première of his unsuccessful opera La vestale (1 May 1787) he remained permanently at Bath in his handsome town house and sumptuous country villa in Perrymead. Among his many guests was Haydn, who wrote the canon Turk was a faithful dog and not a man during a visit from 2 to 5 August 1794. Near the end of his life Rauzzini published a set of 12 vocal exercises with an introduction summing up his ideas on the art of singing and reflecting his own tasteful execution.

diumenge, 18 de desembre del 2022

BAAL, Johann (1657-1701) - Missa tota a 4 Voci

Simon Bening (c.1483-1561) - The Adoration of the Magi


Johann Baal (1657-1701) - Missa tota (A-Dur) a 4 Voci
Performers: Johanna Koslowsky (soprano); David Cordier (countertenor); Wilfried Jochens (tenor); Stephan Schreckenberger (bass) Mensa Sonora Freiburg; Gerhard Weinzierl (conductor)

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German organist and composer. He was the son of a long-established saddler family. Almost nothing is known about his life. He was mentioned on his twenties when he assumed the post of organist and composer at the court of Peter Philipp von Dernbach. In 1685 he left the court to join the Münsterschwarzach monastery where he was ordained as a Pater Marianus Baal on 12 June 1688. As a composer only few works has survived and almost whole of them preserved in manuscript; during his life, only a four set of motets, entitled 'Argumentum et inscriptiones ... opus primum', were published. His most important surviving work is the 'Missa tota' in A-Dur, which was praised and copied by Johann Sebastian Bach (Kyrie) and Johann Gottfried Walther (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). There are also some motets for solo voice and figured bass based on sacred poetry, as well as a violin sonata in a-Moll.

divendres, 16 de desembre del 2022

VON HESSEN-DARMSTADT, Ernst Ludwig (1667-1739) - Sinfonie de Son Altesse Serenissime (1718)

Johann Christian Fiedler (1697-1765) - Bildnis des Landgrafen Ernst Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt


Ernst Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt (1667-1739) - Sinfonie (Suite in A-Dur) de Son Altesse Serenissime (1718)
Performers: Austrian Tonkuenstler Orchestra; Dietfried Bernet (1940-2011, conductor)

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German composer and Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt from 1678 to 1739. His parents were Landgrave Ludwig VI von Hessen-Darmstadt and Elisabeth Dorothea von Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1640-1709). When his father died in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1678, he was succeeded by Ernst Ludwig's older half-brother Ludwig VII, who died shortly thereafter in the same year. His successor was Ernst Ludwig. At that time only 11 years old, he was under the regency of his mother until 1688. In 1688, Ernst Ludwig had to leave the Darmstadt due the French occupation. Then he settled in Nidda and Gießen for the next ten years. After the death of his mother he took over the official regency promoting the absolutist form of government in Hessen-Darmstadt, which resulted in an innovation of the tax system, the creation of a war department and the expansion of the cities, especially Darmstadt. He married Dorothea Charlotte von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1661-1705), daughter of Albert II, Margrave von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1620-1667) on 1 December 1687. The landgrave showed himself to be a patron of theater and music and, like his father and his older sisters Magdalene Sibylle and Auguste Magdalene, distinguished himself as a poet of hymns. Ernst Ludwig composed marches and played the gamba. Among those patronized in this cultural milieu were the composer Christoph Graupner and the gambist Ernst Christian Hesse; also bringing into his service architect Louis Remy de la Fosse for his extensive building program. Upon his death in 1739, his country's debt was 4 million gulden, ten times the annual revenue.

dimecres, 14 de desembre del 2022

GALLINA, Jan Adam (1724-1773) - Sinfonia in Es-Dur

Francesco Foschi (1710-1780) - Winter landscape with fishermen and travellers


Jan Adam Gallina (1724-1773) - Sinfonia in Es-Dur
Performers: Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra; Vοjtеch Spurný (conductor)

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Bohemian composer. He was born into a musical and rich family. He received early studies by his father, the cantor Martin Antonín Gallina (1682-1730), and after his death by other family members. In February 1721 he married the daughter of the governor of the Nový Hrad, Marií Františkou Haubnerovou. In 1744 he applied for a post at the Cítoliby castle, where he remained as a musician and composer the rest of his life under the patronage of the count Arnošt Karel Pachta. Also there he studied with Václav Jan Kopřiva. After the death of the bandmaster Jan Josef Janoušek (1717-1750) he was promoted to orchestra director. He attained the title of 'musicae director a aulae praefectus'. Gallina's three brothers were also musicians, among them, Josef Antonín Gallina (1726-1765). As a composer, he wrote several symphonies and religious works only preseved on manuscrits. He died in Cítoliby during the typhus epidemic.

dilluns, 12 de desembre del 2022

WESLEY JR, Charles (1757-1834) - Quartetto (VI) for two Violins, a Tenor and Violoncello (1778)

Charles Wesley Jr. (1757-1834) - Quartetto (VI) for two Violins, a Tenor and Violoncello (1778)
Performers: Steve's Bedroom Band

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English composer, elder son of Charles Wesley (1707-1788) and brother of Samuel Wesley (1766-1837). He inherited musical ability from both parents. In infancy he displayed a talent almost without parallel: before he was three years old he could ‘play a tune on the harpsichord readily and in just time’ and ‘always put a true bass to it’. His later development hardly fulfilled this promise. During his childhood and adolescence his father discouraged him from becoming a professional musician, and would not let him take up an appointment as chorister or (later) organist at the Chapel Royal. But under Joseph Kelway he became an excellent organist, and held appointments at several dissenting chapels, the Lock Hospital Chapel (1797-1801) and finally St Marylebone parish church. He learnt composition chiefly from William Boyce, to whom he dedicated his set of string quartets. His brother Samuel called him an ‘obstinate Handelian’ and indeed his compositions, especially those for organ and piano, are extremely conservative in style. In 1822 he published a revised edition of John Wesley's Sacred Harmony.

diumenge, 11 de desembre del 2022

CASALI, Giovanni Battista (c.1715-1792) - Confitebor tibi Domine

Bolognese School (17th Century) - Saint Cecilia surrounded by angels


Giovanni Battista Casali (c.1715-1792) - Confitebor tibi Domine
Performers: Vocal Ensemble Herz Jesu, Münster

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Italian composer. In 1740 he was admitted to the Bologna Accademia Filarmonica. He was assistant to Girolamo Chiti, maestro di cappella at S Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, and in 1745 was designated his successor, taking up the post in 1759. Between 1752 and 1791 he was a member of the Congregazione di S Cecilia, serving as one of the examiners and several times holding the office of guardiano della sezione dei maestri compositori. From 1754 until his death he was also maestro di cappella at S Maria in Vallicella and was active in several other churches in Rome. He exchanged letters (now in I-Bc) with Padre Martini in Bologna. Casali wrote much in the strict contrapuntal style of the Roman school, but also used the modern concertante style with virtuoso coloratura lines and homophonic writing, and often with instrumental accompaniment. Burney, who heard his oratorio Abigail (1770) in Rome, called the music ‘common-place, for though it could boast of no new melody or modulation, it had nothing vulgar in it’. This remark is perhaps the source of Fétis’s judgment that Casali ‘had little invention, but his style was very pure’. Grétry, who was Casali’s pupil for two years, praised his counterpoint instruction and called him one of the most famous maestri di cappella in Rome. Casali’s compositions, which are mainly sacred, are in church archives in large numbers, above all at S Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. His Roman oratorios followed the style of the mid-18th-century opera seria, which preserved the da capo aria. During his long term of office he became one of the best-known Italian composers of sacred music of his time.

divendres, 9 de desembre del 2022

OZI, Etienne (1754-1813) - Cinquième Concerto pour le basson (1800)

Louis Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) - Three young artists in a studio


Etienne Ozi (1754-1813) - Cinquième Concerto pour le basson, oeuvre XI (1800)
Performers: Alеxandre Ouzοunοff (bassoon); Orchestre de Chambre De Nimеs; Gillеs Dеrviеux (conductor)

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French bassoonist and composer. He was not (as has been suggested) a son of the composer Pierre Iso (or Yzo), nor did he ever use the pseudonym ‘Yzo’. His parents were Marie Piala and Louis Ozy, a carder of floss silk. Like many wind instrumentalists in France at that time, he may have received his early musical training from a musical corps attached to a military regiment. According to Gerber he had settled in Paris by 1777. Ledebur indicated that he studied with G.W. Ritter, the Mannheim bassoonist, who was in Paris 1777-78. In 1779 he made a brilliant debut at the Concert Spirituel, where he played a bassoon concerto by P.D. Deshayes. His performance was described as: ‘free and confident; the beautiful quality of his sounds on such an unresponsive instrument and the perfect accuracy of his intonation have earned for him a place in the ranks of the best artists’. During the next 12 years he appeared as a soloist at the Concert Spirituel 36 times; on 19 occasions he performed his own concertos and symphonies concertantes. Throughout his career he was praised in the Parisian press for his performances and compositions. In 1783, while in the service of the Duke of Orléans, the first of his 32 suites d’harmonies (for two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons) began to appear in Boyer’s catalogues. Ensembles using the same instrumentation were also used extensively in French Masonic lodges, where they were called colonnes d’harmonies.

Ozi held membership in three different lodges, one of which was the ‘Loge Olympique de la Parfaite Estime’, whose members participated in the famous Concerts de la Loge Olympique. Ozi was a soloist as well as a member of the orchestra for these concerts. From 1786 to 1788 he was Musicien ordinaire de la Chapelle et de la Chambre du Roy. During this time he married Marie Adelaide Du Pont, with whom he had six children. Shortly after the Revolution, he joined the Garde Nationale Parisienne and became a teacher in its affiliated music school, which became the Conservatoire National de Musique in 1795. He continued his activities in the 1790s as a soloist and orchestral musician in the concerts of the Cirque du Palais-Royal (1790), the Théâtre Italien (1792-94), the Théâtre Feydeau (1796) and the Théâtre de la République et des Arts (1799-1800). He apparently had a talent for administrative activities. Representing the musicians in the Parisian National Guard who had established the Magasin de musique à l’usage des fêtes nationales, he dealt with officials of the new revolutionary governments. In 1797 he was appointed manager of this publishing house, which had become the Imprimerie du Conservatoire. He retained that position, as well as giving bassoon lessons at the Conservatoire, until his death. From 1798 to 1806 he was a member of the virtuoses d’élite of the Opéra orchestra and in 1806 he became first bassoonist of Napoleon’s chapelle-musique.

dimecres, 7 de desembre del 2022

GALLAY, Jacques-François (1795-1864) - Fantaisie pour le cor sur l'opéra 'L'Elisire d'amore' (1842)

Fernand Lungren (1857-1932) - In the Café (1882)


Jacques-François Gallay (1795-1864) - Fantaisie pour le cor avec accompag. de piano sur l'opéra L'Elisire d'amore, de Donizetti, Op.46 (1842)
Performers: Annеkе Scοtt (horn); Stеvеn Dеvinе (pianoforte)

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French horn player, teacher and composer. He studied solfège with a local musician when he was only ten, and two years later, he began to learn the horn with his father. At the age of 14, already a member of the Perpignan theatre orchestra, he made his solo début in Devienne’s Les visitandines. In 1818 he was appointed director of a new local music society, and began composition lessons with the son of the bassoonist Ozi who had settled there. After six months, his First Horn Concerto was completed and performed. In 1820, though over-age, he entered the Paris Conservatoire to study with Dauprat. He won the premier prix a year later, and was allowed to play his own composition at his laureate concert. After graduation, he joined the Odéon orchestra, leaving in 1825 to become principal horn at the Théâtre Italien, a post he held for many years. In 1830 he joined the royal chapel, and two years later became first horn for Louis-Philippe’s private ensemble. After ten years as an extra, Gallay succeeded Dauprat at the Société des Concerts in 1841, and in 1842 succeeded him again, as natural horn professor at the Conservatoire, where he remained until his death. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. Gallay was the last major hand-horn figure in France. Reports of his playing praise a bright tone quality, evenness between open and stopped notes (aided by a preference for a narrow bell throat), secure attacks and clear technique; he produced trills in a curious manner, using a fluttering of the tongue. He composed concertos, solos and chamber music, primarily for horn, and a considerable number of exercises, addressing technical and musical issues, still widely used today. Most significant are his Préludes mésurés et non mésurés, which provide insights into cadenza-type performing practices. Gallay also produced a Méthode (Paris, 1843) which, though using ‘first’ and ‘second’ designations, focusses on the upper two octaves of the range, promoting even stopped and open tone colours. This limited range was the most practical for solo playing, though some, including Fétis, found it occasionally monotonous. Gallay’s compositions demonstrate a player’s understanding of the instrument, which may account for his apparent influence on the sound and technique associated with horn-playing in France for many years. 

dilluns, 5 de desembre del 2022

KONIGSPERGER, Marianus (1708-1769) - Concerto ex G à Organo principale

Willem Adriaensz Key (1516-1568) - H. Cecilia musiceert met engelen


Marianus Königsperger (1708-1769) - Concerto ex G à Organo principale (1754)
Performers: Hеrbеrt Wаlti (organ); Thurgаuеr Barockensemble

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German composer. The son of an instrument maker, he went to the Benedictine abbey of Prüfening as a choirboy. His talent for music proved so great that he abandoned the study of theology in its favour; having entered the Benedictine order, he became organist and choirmaster at Prüfening in 1734, a post he retained for the rest of his life. On entering Prüfening he took the name Marianus, renouncing his baptismal names Johann Erhard which he never used in connection with his musical activities. From 1740 until his death he produced a steady stream of publications, most of which were church music, but which also included symphonies and keyboard pieces. With the considerable profits from the sale of nearly 40 publications Königsperger was able to finance not only the building of a new choir organ for Prüfening, but also the improvement of the main organ, the purchase of books for the abbey library and the publication of scholarly works by his fellow monks. Königsperger was one of the most popular and prolific composers of his generation in south Germany, and his music had a very wide circulation. The Augsburg publisher J.J. Lotter, who issued most of his works, described them as the foundation stone of his firm’s prosperity, and Königsperger was said to have done more than any other composer to improve musical standards in Bavarian village churches. His popularity seems to have been widespread and unusually long-lasting; the last of Lotter’s printed music catalogues, of 1820, lists a Missa pastoritia of his, when the church music of his contemporaries had long been out of print. He also had a considerable local reputation as an organist.

Königsperger belongs to the second generation of composers to write in the 18th-century Bavarian church style. This style, to be found in countless publications of liturgical music for parish choirs with limited resources, was largely developed by J.V. Rathgeber in his publications of 1721–36. Its chief characteristics were compactness combined with liturgical propriety, tunefulness, non-contrapuntal choral writing and simple solo parts. The normal scoring was solo SATB, chorus, two violins and basso continuo, with optional trumpets and drums. By the mid-1740s the style was beginning to develop in two directions. Some composers began to write more elaborate music, for well-equipped town or monastery churches; those more concerned with the average rural parish church simplified the style even further. In much of his music Königsperger seemed uncertain which of these lines to follow, and in many ways his earliest publications, in which his style is most homogeneous, are his best. The vesper psalms of op.5 show his gift for writing good, broad melodies for chorus as well as soloists, and for applying ritornello principles to a through-composed psalm setting. In his psalms of 1750 the melodic gift is less conspicuous, the sense of form and balance less assured. Expansive settings of the first few verses are often followed by a dull, perfunctory alla breve tutti, in which the different voices sing different words simultaneously as was common in the Gloria and Credo sections of contemporary missa brevis settings; he made comparatively little use of ritornello techniques, and the touches of word-painting occasionally to be found in the 1743 psalms are absent. 

diumenge, 4 de desembre del 2022

CAMPRA, André (1660-1744) - Omnes Gentes Plaudite Manibus (1725)

Nicolas-Étienne Edelinck (1681-1767) - André Campra (1725)


André Campra (1660-1744) - Omnes Gentes Plaudite Manibus (1725)
Performers: Denise Monteil (1928-1984, soprano); Helmut Krebs (1913-2007, tenor); Michel Carey (baritone); Xavier Depraz (1926-1994, bass); Ludovic Vaillant (trumpet); Philippe Caillard Choir; Stephane Caillat Choir; Jean-Francois Paillard Orchestra; Louis Frémaux (1921-2017, conductor)

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French composer. Campra’s first teacher was most likely his father, Jean-François, a violinist and surgeon. He sang in the choir of St. Sauveur at Aix-en- Provence and began clerical studies in 1678 but showed his dramatic inclinations early when he was nearly dismissed in early 1681 for participating in local theatrical productions without permission. Later that same year, however, he was appointed chaplain. From August 1681 to May 1683, he was maître de chapelle at Saint Trophime in Arles. He then assumed the same title at Saint Étienne in Toulouse beginning in June 1683. He improved the musical resources of what was already considered the best choir in the city, and the authorities sent him to Paris in January 1694 for four months study. He did not return to Toulouse but instead succeeded Jean Mignon as maître de musique at Notre Dame Cathedral. In May 1696, he was made canon at Saint Jean-le-Rond and appears as a composer of Latin tragedies on the programs of the Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand from 1698. In these years, Campra attracted the notice of the Duchess de la Ferté, the future regent of France Philippe d’Orléans, and the Duke de Sully. On 24 October 1697, Campra’s opéra-ballet L’Europe Galante premiered. Campra, worried about how traditional views about the nature of French drama prevailing at Versailles might affect his career, published this opera and the following year’s Vénus, Feste Galante anonymously. But L’Europe Galante was a great success that allowed Campra to leave Notre Dame on 13 October 1700 and concentrate on the theater. His next success was a more traditional tragédie en musique, Tancrède (1702). The first two decades of the 18th century saw Campra at the peak of his popularity. He published his first two books of cantates françoises and four books of motets. King Louis XV awarded him an annual pension of 500 livres on 15 December 1718. In 1722, he entered the service of the Prince de Conti. 

He also composed intermittently for the Chapelle Royale until poor health made him give up this work in 1742. He spent his last years in a small apartment in Versailles, sustained by his pensions. On his death at the age of 84 he left the little money he possessed to two faithful servants. Campra’s main contribution to the French lyric stage was the creation of the opéra-ballet (or simply ‘ballet’), in which each act (or entrée) contains its own characters and plot related in a general way to a collective idea. Campra’s musical style is seen at its best in his opéras-ballets. As he himself stated, it is a mixture of French ‘delicatesse’ and Italian ‘vivacité’. The syllabic airs with short symmetrical phrases, a delicate sense of orchestral colour and an expressive and organic use of vocal ornamentation are characteristically French, as is the five-part texture inherited from Lully, which prevails in many symphonies. Campra was the most catholic of the generation of composers that flourished between Lully’s death (1687) and Rameau’s début as an opera composer (1733). Two books of psalms à grand choeur were printed by Ballard (1737 and 1738), each containing two psalms. A third psalm à grand choeur is found in book 3 of the petits motets. The greater part of the remaining 46 grands motets are found in manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Although they follow the tradition of the Versailles motet, they also borrow from the composer’s tragédies en musique. He was the dominant composer for the French musical theater in the first two decades of the 18th century. Campra composed the first opéraballet in 1697, inaugurating a tradition of unabashed comedy in France after the death of the tragedian Jean-Baptiste Lully. His two dozen works for the musical theater also comprise ballets, divertissements, and tragédies lyriques. He also left 22 French cantatas, a requiem mass and a plainsong mass.

divendres, 2 de desembre del 2022

STERKEL, Johann Franz Xaver (1750-1817) - Concerto (II) pour le Pianoforte (1788)

Heinrich Eduard von Wintter (1788-1829) - J. Fr. Xav. Sterkel (1816)


Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750-1817) - Concerto (II, en Re majeur) pour le Pianoforte, Op.26 (1788)
Performers: Christoph Lieske (piano); Kammerorchester Merck; Peter Lücker (conductor)

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German composer. His musical gift was evident at a young age; he had rigorous musical training from the court organist A. Kette and from Weismandel in Würzburg, where he entered the university in 1764. In 1768 he was tonsured and became organist in the collegiate chapter of Neumünster, later rising to sub-deacon (1772), deacon (1773) and finally priest (1774). His lifelong service to the church provided a subsistence without noticeably compromising his musical career. As a result of a performance at the Würzburg court, he was invited to perform for the court at Mainz, noted for its orchestra and its active musical life. His trip included a visit to Mannheim, where Mozart heard him perform and condemned his excessive tempos (letter of 26 November 1777). Early in 1778 Sterkel was called to Mainz to fill a position in the Liebfrauen chapter and was named court chaplain as well. Late in 1779 Elector Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal sent him on an extended tour of Italy. He seems nevertheless to have gained much in his mature style from his extended exposure to Italian taste. He visited all the major cities of Italy, frequently performing as a pianist. For the Naples court he played duo sonatas and concertos with Lady Catherine Hamilton; the queen commissioned his only opera, Il Farnace, performed in an elaborate production with ballets at the S Carlo on 12 January 1782. Travelling north again in May, he spent several weeks with Padre Martini in Bologna, then was recalled to Mainz to fill a canonry of his chapter. He visited Stein’s piano workshop in Augsburg en route and was thereafter an advocate and sometimes agent for Stein’s instruments. In Mainz before the end of the year, he plunged into a period of intense music-making and composition. Sterkel’s well-known meeting with Beethoven, as reported by Simrock and Wegeler, occurred early in 1791. Sterkel played one of his own sonatas, accompanied by Andreas Romberg on the violin. 

Beethoven was reluctant to perform in turn, and was challenged to play his own demanding Righini variations, which had recently been published; he played those that he remembered and improvised additional ones, successfully imitating throughout the distinctive light, graceful performing style just displayed by Sterkel. When the Mainz court was disrupted by the French invasion in October 1792, the director, Vincenzo Righini, was called to Berlin. On the regaining of Mainz, he was named Kapellmeister (1793) and charged with rebuilding the court music, but the war caused further difficulties and the royal chapel was disbanded in 1797. Except for a visit to Righini in Berlin, he spent the next years in Würzburg. The court there fostered mainly sacred performances, and he composed much church music, including several festival masses. From about 1802 he was in Regensburg, where his unceasing efforts on behalf of the musical life brought accolades; he established a choir school to provide good vocalists and wrote most of his partsongs at that time. After his Regensburg patron, Karl Theodor von Dalberg, was made Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Sterkel followed him to Aschaffenburg in April 1810 and was appointed music director. Among other duties he was responsible for theatrical productions, including performances of some Mozart operas. When Aschaffenburg was annexed to Bavaria in 1814 the court was dissolved. In 1815 he visited Munich, then returned to Würzburg. Beethoven is said once to have called Sterkel the ‘royal composer’, as his published dedications form a roster of the highest members of the nobility. Sterkel was also an effective teacher, whose pupils included the pianists C.P. Hoffmann, G.C. Zulehner, Catherina Bauer and T. Horgniés, and the singers E. Eck, L. Barensfeld, N. Häckel, J.C. Grünbaum and G. Weichselbaum. As a composer, his own compositional style is close to Haydn. His works include an opera, four Masses, a Te Deum, 125 Lieder, 15 part songs, eight concert arias, 26 symphonies, six piano concertos, a piano quartet, a quintet, 46 trios, 31 violin sonatas, six duos, 14 keyboard sonatas and 53 miscellaneous other pieces for keyboard.

dimecres, 30 de novembre del 2022

FÖRSTER, Christoph (1693-1745) - Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe

Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) e Marco Ricci (1676-1730) - Susanna davanti a Daniele


Christoph Förster (1693-1745) - Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe
Performers: Hanna Herfurtner (soprano); Carola Günther (alto); Georg Poplutz (tenor); Raimonds Spogis (bass);
Kölner Akademie; Michael Alexander Willens (conductor)

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German composer. He studied first with the organist Pitzler, then left Bibra for Weissenfels where he learnt thoroughbass and composition from Heinichen. When Heinichen went to Italy, Förster became a pupil of Georg Friedrich Kauffmann at Merseburg. In 1717 he was appointed violinist in the Merseburg court orchestra and later became Konzertmeister there. While employed at the court Förster dedicated six sonatas, six cantatas and 12 concertos to the duchess; he also learnt Italian, the predominant language for secular vocal music. Förster was granted leave of absence from Merseburg on several occasions: in 1719 he visited Heinichen at Dresden and in 1723 went to Prague where he met Fux, Caldara, Conti and other eminent musicians involved in the coronation celebrations of Charles VI. In August 1742 he played a leading part (under Johann Graf) in the birthday festivities of Prince Friedrich Anton of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and the following year was appointed vice-Kapellmeister at Rudolstadt. Among works written for this court is a birthday cantata dedicated to Princess Bernhardine (5 May 1745). When Graf died in 1745 Förster succeeded him as Kapellmeister, but held this post for only a few weeks before his own death. There is some confusion surrounding Förster’s activities between 1739 and 1743. Loewenberg (Grove5) stated that he held an appointment at Sondershausen during this period, but in Förster’s application for the post at Rudolstadt (3 March 1743) he merely said he had been Kammermusikus and Konzertmeister at Merseburg ‘for a long time’. In his own day Förster was greatly respected as a composer of church music. Gerber thought highly of the cantatas; when a boy he had sung many ‘agreeable’ arias by Förster in the local church at Sondershausen. In his instrumental music, Förster has been described as one of the leading exponents of the French overture: the overture in A major (ed. Riemann) shows a fine sense of form and a keen appreciation of instrumental colour. Whereas the orchestral suites are indebted to French models, the sinfonias and concertos display the influence of the Italian style. Förster’s chamber music invites comparison with Telemann’s. Both composers show the same ability to combine learned counterpoint and melodious themes, the same predilection for voice change and love of short melodic phrases in the galant manner. Few of Förster’s works were printed in the 18th century. The two main publications were a set of six symphonies published by Haffner (Nuremberg, 1747) and six Duetti oder Trii for two violins and optional continuo engraved by Telemann (see Mattheson). Förster was an extremely prolific composer. According to Walther he had written over 300 pieces by 1732, and the Breitkopf catalogues mention numerous works by him. It is obvious that existing work-lists are far from complete. Unfortunately many manuscripts lack the distinguishing Christian name so that authorship is open to dispute.

dilluns, 28 de novembre del 2022

LULLY, Jean Baptiste (1632-1687) - Ouverture avec tous les Airs de l'opéra Atys (1676)

Jean Louis Roullet (1645-1699) - Portret van Jean-Baptiste Lully


Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) - Ouverture avec tous les Airs de l'opéra Atys (1676)
Performers: Capriccio Basel Baroque Orchestra; Dominik Kiefer (conductor)

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French composer, violinist and dancer. Born Giovanni Battista Lulli, he was the second son of a Tuscan farmer, Lorenzo Lulli (1599-1667). Little is known of the son’s education. Perhaps he learned the fundamentals of music from the friars of the Via Borgo Ognissanti in Florence. Somehow, possibly as early as 1645, he managed to be appointed as a tutor of Italian to Anne- Marie-Louise d’Orléans, cousin of King Louis XIV of France. In February 1646, Lully moved to Paris. A source printed in 1695 identifies Lully’s teachers from this point: the organists at the church of St. Louis of Rue Saint-Antoine, Nicolas Métru and Nicolas Gigault, the violinist Jacques Cordier, and the dancer Jean Regnault. Possibly through Regnault, Lully entered the service of Louis XIV and danced in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit, caught the eye of the king, and was appointed compositeur de la musique instrumentale on 16 March 1653. His dancing and obvious talent for composition allowed Lully to persuade the king to establish an instrumental ensemble apart from his official one, Les Vingtquatre Violons du Roi. Lully was able to form the new orchestra, Les Petits Violons, according to his own ideas of ensemble playing, and it would become famous throughout Europe. In 1656, Les Petits Violons made its debut in the ballet Les Galanteries du Temps, the earliest surviving ballet composed entirely by Lully. On 24 July 1662, he married Madeleine Lambert, a composer’s daughter 20 years of age. They had six children. To this point, Lully as composer had contributed chiefly to court ballets. But age began to curtail his dancing, and he retired as a dancer by 1668. In 1664, however, he entered upon a second stage of his career as composer: a collaboration with the great dramatist Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), known by his stage name Moliére, on a series of comédies-ballets, comic dramas in which Lully’s dance music interweaves with Molière’s poetry, beginning with Le Mariage Forcé (29 January 1664), including Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (14 October 1670), and concluding with Psyché (17 January 1671).

In March 1672, Lully was to able buy the royal privilege of producing “academies for opera . . . in the French language”—essentially a patent for a monopoly granted by Louis XIV—from its original holder, the poet Pierre Perrin (c.1620-1675), and immediately moved to establish the Académie Royale de Musique. Because the privilege brought no court financing of the new venture, Lully entered into a partnership with long-time acquaintance and theater architect Carlo Vigarani (1637-1713) in August 1672, and together they adapted a tennis court for their productions. They began with Les Fêtes de L’Amour et de Bacchus, a pastiche made of Lully’s earlier ballet music, and they mounted the first original tragédie lyrique in April 1673, Cadmus et Hermione. This created a sensation, luring the king to the tennis court to see it. By 28 April 1673, the king authorized Lully to use the Palais Royal theater rent-free, and after the opening of Alceste in January 1674, Louis brought the business of tragédie lyrique into the court, supported by the court’s sets, costumes, and machinery and by funded rehearsals. With such backing, Lully produced a new opera nearly every year until he died in 1687, usually working with the great librettist Philippe Quinault (1635-1688). His control of the royal opera privilege virtually eliminated all rivals from Paris, although he did allow provincial opera companies to operate. He also managed the Palais Royal almost as a monopoly, setting high prices for seats. The royal privilege allowed him to earn royalties on his printed librettos and, after 1677, royalties from prints of his music. From then on, he published complete scores of all his tragédies lyriques, a phenomenon unknown in the rest of Europe, where opera scores were lucky to survive in manuscript. In December of 1686, while conducting his Te Deum at the Church of the Feuillants, he wounded himself in the foot. The wound became gangrenous, and Lully died on 22 March 1687.

diumenge, 27 de novembre del 2022

ZACH, Jan (1713-1773) - Missa ex D à 4 (c.1755)

Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674-1755) - Pope Benedict XIII Presiding over the Provincial Roman Synod


Jan Zach (1713-1773) - Missa ex D à 4 (c.1755)
Performers: Mаyа Bοοg (soprano); Grаhаm Pushее (alto); Stеvе Dаvislim (tenor); Wοlf Mаtthiаs Friеdrich (bass); Kammerchor Collegium Vocale Innsbruck; Cappella Istrοpolitаnа; Bеrnhard Siеbеrеr (conductor)

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Bohemian composer and organist. The son of a wheelwright, he went to Prague in 1724 and began his career as a violinist at St Gallus and at St Martín. Later he became organist at St Martín and, by 1737, at the monastic church of the Merciful Brethren and the Minorite chapel of St Ann. According to Dlabač he was a pupil of B.M. Černohorský (who was in Prague, 1720-27) in organ playing and composition. In 1737 Zach competed unsuccessfully for the post of organist at St Vitus’s Cathedral. He is reported to have left Bohemia, but was in Prague until 1740. About 1745 he was at Augsburg, and on 24 April 1745 he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Elector of Mainz, succeeding his countryman Jan Ondráček. On 4 October of the same year a mass by Zach was given at Frankfurt, at the coronation of Emperor Franz I. Zach visited Italy in 1746 and in autumn 1747 he spent about two months in Bohemia. At the Mainz court he was involved in various disputes, probably caused by his eccentricity. He was suspended in 1750, and in 1756 he was dismissed and succeeded by another Bohemian musician, J.M. Schmid. He sought appointments at the court of the Prince-Elector at Trier and later at Cologne, and apparently spent the rest of his life travelling, visiting various courts (Koblenz, Cologne, Darmstadt, Dillingen, Würzburg, Werhammer, Wallerstein) and monasteries (Seligenstadt, Amorbach, Eberbach, Stams). In 1767 and between 1771 and 1772 he again visited Italy, staying for two months at Bressanone on his return journey. He earned his living by selling and dedicating copies of his works and by teaching; he also performed as a soloist on the harpsichord and the violin and conducted performances of his compositions. He appears to have had close contact with the Cistercian monastery at Stams, Tyrol, where he stayed several times; at various times he was music teacher at the Jesuit school in Munich and possibly choirmaster at the Pairis monastery in Alsace.

In January 1773 he was at the Wallerstein court; four months later, according to the Frankfurt Kayserliche Reichs-Ober-Post-Amts-Zeitung of 5 June, he died on a journey, at Ellwangen, and was buried in the local monastic church of St Wolfgang. Zach seems to have been a complicated personality both as man and as artist: his musical expression ranges from introverted melancholy to robust verve, with an intense rhythmic drive. A full chronology of his works has not been established. His output includes both instrumental and sacred music; both genres reflect a stylistic transition from the late Baroque to the pre-Classical. In his church music, retrospective polyphony and Venetian ‘mixed style’ (for example the Requiem in G minor k B18) co-exist with a more homophonic, concertante idiom of Neapolitan orientation, often pervaded with Czech dance rhythms. His best sacred works include the Requiem in C minor (k B17), abounding in melodic chromaticism and striving for dramatic expressiveness, the Stabat mater and the Missa solemnis. Zach’s sinfonias and partitas are scored for strings, solo or orchestral, or for strings and wind. Various types of pre-Classical formal organization are represented, notably the three-movement Italian overture form (sometimes expanded to four movements). Both the sinfonias and concertos use many devices of the galant style, such as periodic two- or four-bar structure, much passage-work and ornamentation, parallel 6ths and 3rds, Alberti bass and so on. The national character of Zach’s music was noted as early as 1774 by M. Gerbert: ‘qui praestantissimum suae gentis characterem sine peregrini Italiae styli admixtione egregie expressit’ (De cantu et musica sacra, ii, 371). Komma has shown that many of Zach’s engaging melodies and rhythms have their roots in Czech folksong and dance.

divendres, 25 de novembre del 2022

REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich (1752-1814) - Sonata per il Pianoforte e Violino

Nicolaas Hopman (1794-1870) - Portrait of two musicians (1826)


Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) - Sonata (F-Dur) per il Pianoforte e Violino
Performers: Massimo Spadano (violin); Arthur Schoonderwoerd (pianoforte)

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German composer, political writer and writer on music. Son of a lutenist, Johann Reichardt (c.1720-1780), he received his early musical education from his father. His early teachers also included J.F. Hartknoch (a young musician from Riga then learning the publishing trade in Königsberg), a local musician named Krüger, the organist C.G. Richter, who introduced Reichardt to the music of C.P.E. and J.S. Bach, and the violinist F.A. Veichtner, a pupil of Franz Benda. He attended Königsberg university, where he became acquainted with the philosophy of Emanuel Kant. Like other young artists in the 18th century, he began his career with years of travel. The first of his journeys began in spring 1771 with a performing tour of north German musical and literary centres; he met J.A.P. Schulz, Ramler, Friedrich Nicolai, Franz Benda, J.A. Hiller, J.G. Naumann, C.P.E. Bach, Lessing, Klopstock and Claudius. During this journey he spent two long periods in Berlin, where he attended performances of Graun and Hasse operas at the declining royal opera and oratorios at public concerts, studied briefly with Kirnberger and was deeply impressed by his first substantial hearing of Handel’s music. In 1775 he applied for and won the post of Kapellmeister to Frederick II though he had little experience in musical composition. He married Juliane Benda, Franz Benda’s daughter, in 1776, and remarried soon after she died in 1783. Tours to Italy and Vienna in 1783 (where he became friends with Joseph Martin Kraus) as well as France and England in 1785 both broadened his education and served to implement a Concert spirituel in Berlin. 

He was close friends with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, working with the former in 1789 on the Singspiel Claudine von Villa Bella. From the end of 1794 until the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1797, Reichardt lived in Hamburg and Giebichenstein, active as a political journalist, and editing the journals Frankreich and Deutschland. In 1796 he was appointed director of the Halle salt mines, a position which gave him leisure to pursue his own interests. In 1806 Napoleon’s troops occupied parts of Prussia, and also Halle and Giebichenstein. Reichardt and his family fled to north Germany, and returned in October 1807 to find the estate in Giebichenstein in ruins. With barely enough money to support his family, he had to depend on income from writing and composing until 1811, when he was given a small pension. He made several more journeys, to Berlin, Leipzig and Breslau, but his brilliant reputation had gone. He died largely forgotten. As a composer, his musical style is often dramatic, with orchestration that foreshadows the Romantic period, and he can be considered both an adherent of the Sturm und Drang style and one of the principal composers of Lieder of the Berlin School. His compositions include 1500 Lieder, 29 operas (mostly Singspiels), 11 sets of incidental music to plays, two ballets, two oratorios, 13 German cantatas, a Requiem, two Te Deums, eight Psalms, nine symphonies, 11 concertos (nine for keyboard), three quintets, a quartet, 15 trios, 26 keyboard sonatas, 16 violin sonatas, and over 100 horn duets. Reichardt can be seen as one of the most intellectual composers of the period.