Un portal on escoltar i gaudir de l'art musical dels segles XVI, XVII, XVIII i XIX. Compartir la bellesa de la música és l'objectiu d'aquest espai i fer-ho donant a conèixer obres de compositors molt o poc coneguts és el mètode.
Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611-1675)
- Suite in g-moll aus 'Erster Fleiß Allerhand neuer Paduanen,
Galliarden, Balletten, Mascharaden, Françoischen Arien, Courentten und
Sarabanden ... Erster Theil' (1636)
Performers: Spirit of Gambo; Ecco la musica; Heinz Hennig (conductor)
Bohemian composer and organist. His father, Hans Hammerschmidt
(1581-1636), was of Saxon descent and was a saddler in Bohemia, first at
Saaz and from 1610 at Brüx, and his mother probably came from Bohemia.
Nothing is known about his early education. By this date there was no
Gymnasium at Brüx, and his name does not appear in the registers of the
Gymnasium at Freiberg. From July 1633 to 1634 he was organist to Count
Rudolf von Bünau at his castle in Weesenstein, Saxony, and from 1634 to
1639 at St. Petri in Freiberg im Breisgau. On 22 August 1637 he married
there Ursula Teuffel, the daughter of a Prague businessman; of their six
children, three died in infancy. From 1639 until his death, he was
organist at St. Johannis in Zittau. During his tenure in Zittau, he
became one of the most celebrated musicians of the day. He died on 29
October 1675; his funeral was well attended; and his tombstone describes
him as the ‘Orpheus of Zittau’. As a composer, he wrote a large body of
sacred vocal music, some 400 works published in 14 collections. His
compositions for the Lutheran liturgy are of great significance.
Although he was an organist all his life, no organ works by him have
survived. His instrumental music is confined to the three collections of
pieces that appeared in 1636, 1639 and 1650. He was one of the earliest
composers to adopt the new Italian style of writing elaborate
instrumental accompaniments to polyphonic vocal works.
Russian composer. He was born into an Ukrainian Cossack's family in the
city of Glukhov which at that time used to be the capital of Malorussia
famous by its choir schools. Having studied in one of them for a year or
two the seven-year-old boy endowed with the fine treble together with
nine other best pupils had been sent to St-Petersburg and admitted to
the Court Choirs as a chorister yet during the time of Elizabeth, Peter
the Great's daughter. The brilliant talents of the choir-boy haven't
been left unnoticed. Eleven-year-old Dmitry was entrusted with the part
of Alzesta in the opera of the same name written by the court composer
Hermann Raupach. Two years later when the production was renewed he
performed the main men's tenor part of Admet. The boy was appointed to
the Shlyahetsky Corps to be taught dramatic arts and foreign languages.
But what is the most important his successes were noticed by Baldassare
Galuppi himself. The eminent maestro highly appreciated Bortnyansky's
talents and was teaching him vocal, clavicembalo playing and composition
for over three years. Leaving Russia in summer, 1768, Galuppi urgently
recommended to send the gifted young man to Italy to continue his
education. In 1776 Bortnyansky makes his debut as an opera composer. The
first performance of his 'Creont' took place in the Venetian theater
'San Benedetto'. The next opera 'Alkid' (1778) was also staged in
Venice, in 'San Samuel' theater presumably under Galuppi's protection.
The new composition testified to the indisputable maturity of the
twenty-seven-year-old composer and his outstanding artistic talent. In
April, 1779, he received from Russia the order signed by the Director of
the Court Theaters I. P. Yelagin 'without a moment's delay... to come
back to the Motherland...'. Settled in Sant Petersburg for the rest of
his life, he wrote music for the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as
operas for the court of Catherine II. By 1796, her successor, Paul III,
made him director of the Imperial Choir and recognized him as a national
musical figure. As a composer, he wrote over 100 sacred works,
including 45 sacred concertos, seven Orthodox liturgical settings, an
Ave Maria and a Salve Regina, and numerous other pieces in Russian. In
addition, he wrote seven operas, a large ode, several part songs, a
quintet and a symphony (titled Symphonie concertante), two harp sonatas,
and a march for wind band. Bortnjanskij’s style follows the harmony and
lyricism of his Italian teacher, but the Russian works include
paraphrases of Old Slavonic chant, as well as occasional folk elements,
particularly in the instrumental compositions.
Italian composer and harpsichordist, sixth child of Alessandro Scarlatti
(1660-1725) and Antonia Anzaloni (1658-1725). Details about his youth
and education from contemporary biographers are obscure. In 1700,
Alessandro arranged for Domenico to be specially appointed as
'clavicembalista di camera', in addition to the more regular post of
organist and composer of the Cappella Reale in Naples, indicating
perhaps that Domenico’s flair for the harpsichord was already evident.
In 1705, Alessandro had Domenico join him in Rome and then sent him to
Venice, but nothing is documented about the son’s activities in either
place. From Rome comes the famous, if unsupported, story about the
keyboard competition between Domenico and George Frideric Handel set up
by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, in which it is said that Domenico
recognized Handel’s primacy on the organ but that the harpsichord
competition ended in a tie. The two admired each other throughout their
careers. Perhaps as early as 1708, he served the exiled Queen Maria
Casimira of Poland in Rome as maestro di cappella, and then he succeeded
to the same post at the prestigious Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s
after the death of Tommaso Baj on 22 December 1714. He composed his most
significant sacred work, including a 10-voice Stabat Mater, at this
time. His operas were occasionally staged at the Teatro Capranica, along
with those of his father. Sometime before 1719, through connections
with the Portuguese ambassador in Rome, he was appointed 'mestre de
capela' to King João V of Portugal, and he arrived in Lisbon on 29
November 1719, charged with tutoring the king’s brother Don Antonio. A
more important pupil, however, was the talented Princess Maria Barbara.
Scarlatti composed sonatas (essercizi) for her and for Don Antonio; it
is possible that these represent the first batch of about 550 that he
would compose for harpsichord solo.
On 19 January 1729, Maria Barbara married Fernando (1713-1759), heir to
the throne in Spain, and soon Scarlatti followed his royal student, by
her father’s command, to the Spanish court. He was certainly in Rome in
January 1727, when he was ill and granted leave by the Portuguese king
for his recovery. His music was performed for the princess’s betrothal
ceremony on 11 January 1728 in Lisbon, but Scarlatti’s presence at the
occasion is not confirmed. On 15 May that year, he married Maria
Catalina Gentili in Rome. They had six children before she died on 6 May
1739. Scarlatti then married Anastasia Ximenes of Cádiz, who bore him
four children. At the Spanish court, free from the obligations of a
maestro di cappella, he could enjoy a fairly quiet and leisurely life of
teaching and performing for and with the royal family, free to compose
his harpsichord sonatas. When Fernando acceded to the Spanish throne in
1746, their resident singer Farinelli convinced them to establish a
court opera, but Scarlatti was not asked to compose for it and left
instead during the 1750s to copy systematically his collected sonatas.
The manuscripts indicate that he composed them to the very last days of
his life. As a composer, he composed 13 operas of his own from 1703 to
1718, 23 other dramatic works extending to 1728, about 70 chamber
cantatas, 3 masses, 14 Latin motets, and 17 sinfonie, but his modern
reputation rests on the roughly 550 harpsichord sonatas, mostly composed
later in life in the service of the royal courts of Portugal and Spain.
Domenico’s first widely circulated publication, the 30 Essercizi of
1737, impressed keyboard players all over the continent with its
exploitation of virtuoso keyboard effects such as crossed hands and
rapidly repeated tones. His brother Pietro Filippo Scarlatti (1679-1750)
was also a composer mainly active in Naples.
Austrian composer and conductor. He received his first musical
instruction at Schwaz, from the choirmaster Georg Benedikt Pichler, and
continued his studies under Martin Goller at Innsbruck and then at the
Vienna Conservatory under Simon Sechter and Gottfried Preyer. From 1842
to 1848 he lived in Paris. He lectured at the Conservatory, and from
1843 he taught Thomas Tellefsen composition who stated about his
teacher: “I've begun taking lessons in theory from a student of Simon
Sechter, a famous Viennese contrapuntist, whose name is Nagiller, and
who is a great composer and has a solid knowledge from Johann Philipp
Kirnberger, as Sechter belongs to the circle of Kirnberger and Bach; you
would not imagine how happy he was when I showed him my treasures of
Israel Gottlieb Wernicke, Ole Andreas Lindeman and the Bachs; he was
extremely happy and found in 'Die Kunst des reinen Satzes' an appendix
which he could not get in Vienna in a great music library.” Also in
Paris, Matthäus Nagiller premiered his best-known instrumental score,
the Symphony No.1 (1845), considered his masterwork. In 1847 he began an
extensive concert tour through Germany with remarkable success. In 1848
he returned to Austria, settling in Bozen. In 1854 he was in Munich
where he lived until 1861, premiering several masses, songs and a
concert overture. In 1865 he returned to Bozen as the city's music
director before moving permanently to Innsbruck where he assumed the
director post of the Musikverein. As a composer his output is almost
enterely vocal (operas, masses, songs, lieder, hymns et al.) but he also
left a symphony, several overtures and keyboard pieces. His style is
close to his Tyrolean fellows Johann Baptist Gänsbacher, Josef Netzer
and Johann Rufinatscha and its very representative of the Tyrol music.
French violinist and composer. His birthplace, listed in old lexicons as
Châlons, was more likely to have been Chalon-sur-Saône, where the name
Touchemoulin is relatively common, than Châlons-sur-Marne, where it is
unknown. A notice dated 11 March 1753, the earliest surviving evidence
of his activities, announced an increase in his salary as violinist in
the orchestra of the Saxon Elector Clemens August at Bonn. He may
already have held this post for some time, to judge from the relatively
high salary he commanded. Although there is no evidence that
Touchemoulin ever visited Paris, one of his symphonies was performed at
the Concert Spirituel on the day of the Assumption 1754, and his only
printed works, the symphonies op.1 (1761) and concertos op.2 (1775),
were published in Paris. On the title-page of op.2 he is called a pupil
of Tartini with whom he probably studied in the late 1750s while still
under the protection of Clemens August. On the death of the elector's
Kapellmeister Joseph Zudoli late in 1760, Touchemoulin was appointed to
that post, over the objections of Ludwig van Beethoven the elder
(grandfather of the composer), who thought the job should have fallen to
him (several letters arising from this dispute are reproduced in Forbes
and Prod'homme). But six months later Clemens August died, and the new
elector, Maximilian Friedrich, substantially reduced the young
Kapellmeister's salary. Touchemoulin resigned, and was succeeded by
Beethoven (16 July 1761). He then moved to Regensburg, where he became
first violinist and Kapellmeister to the Prince of Thurn and Taxis. He
remained there until his death, playing, composing and conducting to the
satisfaction of his associates. Touchemoulin was known as a fine
violinist, although he apparently suffered a stroke which severely
reduced his physical capabilities as well as his financial status. His
compositions are reputed to have been skilfully written but not notably
original. Of his three children, two are known to have been musicians,
his daughter Anna Catharina Touchemoulin (1757-1844), who was singer and
pianist, and his son Egidius or Ludwig Touchemoulin (1759-1830), who by
about 1777 was a violinist in his father's orchestra and in 1787 became
its leader.
French composer and teacher. He began learning the piano and flute and
composing on his own before entring the Paris Conservatoire to study
harmony under Anton Reicha and composition under Jean-François Le Sueur.
His earliest works are chamber pieces dating from about 1835. In 1851
he was appointed professor of harmony at the Conservatoire, and in 1853
the success of 'Le père Gaillard' resulted in his election to the
Institut as George Onslow’s successor. In 1862 he succeeded Fromental
Halévy as professor of composition at the Conservatoire; from 1871 he
was also inspector of the Conservatoire’s branches. He was made a
Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1855, and an Officier in 1870.
Despite he wrote many music, among them, 5 operas, one ballet and 4
symphonies, he is remembered almost entirely for his 'Traité d’harmonie'
(Paris, 1862).
Italian composer active in Rome. Few details are known about him. He was
active as a composer and chapel master in Santa Agnese in Agone and in
Santa Maria in Trastevere, both in Rome. He also performed some of his
oratorios at the Chiesa Nuova and San Marcello al Corso. Some sources
stated he was also active in the Teatro Argentina, Rome, and in the
Wurtemberg Court orchestra. As a composer, his extant work is
exclusively vocal, among them, a Messa à quatro Concertata (1734), the
cantata 'Dunque è pur ver che parti' (1719) and several psalms.
Italian composer and violinist. Although largely self-trained as a
youth, a catastrophic failure of his first opera, Gli amici rivali, at
the age of 16 directed him to receive professional training from
Benedetto Marcello and Antonio Lotti in Venice. By 1729 he had attained a
reputation in the city as a facile and progressive composer of opera,
finding employment in various opera houses as a continuo player. In 1738
he was appointed as the musical director of the Ospedale dei
Mendicanti, later traveling to London to perform his operas. By 1745,
beginning with La forza d’amore, he started writing comic operas, and
only four years later he began collaborating with Carlo Goldoni on a
series of comic works for the Venetian carnival. Although he continued
to receive a salary from the Mendicante and as assistant maestro di
cappella at St. Mark’s, he concentrated almost exclusively on
commissions for various cities in Europe. In 1762 he was appointed as
maestro di coro at St. Mark’s as well as musical director at the
Ospedale degli Incurabili, and two years later he traveled to St.
Petersburg to produce operas at the court of Catherine II, including
Ifigenia in Tauride. Upon his return to Italy in 1768, he turned toward
the composition of sacred music. Charles Burney considered Galuppi an
“intelligent and agreeable gentleman,” the most original of all of the
Italian composers met during his journey. He is one of the earliest
composers to develop the ensemble finale, and his use of colorful
orchestration was praised by Burney, among others. His writing showed a
special gift for good melody and knowledge of vocal writing. He set much
of Pietro Mestastasio’s texts to music, and his collaboration with
Goldoni produced popular comic works, such as La Diavolessa (1755), Il
mondo alla roversa and Il mondo della luna (1750), and La Cantarina
(1756), many of which were produced successfully all over Europe. He
also delved into historical opera with Gustavo I (1740, to a serious
text by Goldoni), based upon the figure of Swedish king Gustaf Wasa. In
all, Galuppi wrote 90 sonatas for keyboard, seven concertos “à 4,” 106
operas, 27 oratorios, 19 cantatas, several Masses, and a host of smaller
sacred works, some of which were formerly attributed to Antonio Vivaldi
and Johann Adolph Hasse. His son, Antonio Galuppi (c.1740-1780), was a
librettist who supplied texts for at least four operas composed by his
father.
Flemish composer and violinist. Baptized in the St. Géry parish in 1729,
he received his earliest education from Baroque violinist Jean-Joseph
Fiocco before being accepted into the second violin section of the royal
chapel of Charles of Lorraine at the age of 17. In 1749 he was
appointed concertmaster and two years later embarked upon the first of
several concert tours, this one to Dublin where he published his first
compositions, six trios for two violins and basso, with William
Mainwaring. He also served as in-house composer for the Charitable Music
Society and Philharmonick Concerts. In 1754 he appeared as a soloist in
his own violin concerto at the Concerts spirituels in Paris, where the
Mercure de France proclaimed him a “great talent,” a sentiment later
echoed by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. In 1757 he accompanied his
patron to Vienna, and due to the success of his opera Les amours
champêtres, he decided to devote his attentions to the composition of
opera, becoming a codirector of the Grand Théâtre in Brussels. This was
made possible by an appointment as valet de chambre to Prince Charles,
which allowed him the freedom to explore opportunities outside of court.
By 1766, however, the enterprise had failed, but in the intervening
years he had attained a considerable reputation for his symphonies,
which were published in London and Paris and were lauded by theorists
such as Johann Adam Hiller. He also was much sought after as a teacher.
He died from a stroke at his home in Brussels. He composed around 60
symphonies, of which 26 were published during his lifetime. In addition,
he wrote six operas, an orchestral concerto, a flute concerto, two
violin concertos, 27 trio sonatas, 15 violin sonatas, and three keyboard
trios. His musical style, characterized by Hiller and others, was
described as “full of fire and invention ... and far more cohesive,
orderly, and weighty than the works of some others” and “uncommonly
brilliant.” The symphonies especially show dramatic elements that are
characteristic of the Sturm und Drang, including restless ostinati,
syncopations, abrupt dynamic changes, tremolo, and use of minor keys.
Italian composer and mandolin player. Almost nothing is known about him,
although he appears to have been a native of Naples, city where he was
active as a violinist and mandolin player between 1764 and 1776. As a
composer, his works include several symphonies, two concertos for
mandolins and two mandolin sonatas. His style is reminiscent of
Empfindsamkeit, with a penchant for Neapolitan lyricism.
German composer and organist, eldest of the three sons of Johann Tobias
Krebs (1690-1762). He received his first musical instruction from his
father, including organ lessons as early as his 12th year. He later
studied with Johann Sebastian Bach on the organ. Bach (who had also
instructed Krebs's father) held Krebs in high standing. From a technical
standpoint, Krebs was unrivaled next to Bach in his organ proficiency.
However, he found it difficult to obtain a patron or a cathedral post.
His Baroque style was being supplanted by the newer galant music style
and the classical music era. Krebs took a small post in Zwickau, and in
1755 (five years after the death of Bach, which is normally referred to
as the end of the Baroque period) he was appointed court organist of
Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg under Prince Friedrich. Krebs had seven children
and struggled to feed his family. Despite never holding a court composer
post, and never being commissioned for a work, Krebs was able to
compose a significant collection of works, though few were published
until the 1900s. Krebs’s three surviving sons were all musicians: Johann
Gottfried Krebs (1741-1814) was the Stadtkantor in Altenburg; Carl
Heinrich Gottlieb Krebs (1747-1793) was court organist in Eisenberg from
1774 but no compositions by him survive; Ehrenfried Christian Traugott
Krebs (1753-1804) succeeded his father as court organist at Altenburg
from 1780 and published a collection of six organ chorale preludes
(Leipzig, 1787); he also wrote a jubilee cantata (music lost) to a text
published in Altenburg in 1793. His son, Ferdinand Traugott Krebs, was
awarded the post of ‘Mittelorganist’ at Altenburg in 1808 but nothing
further is known of him.
Bohemian composer, active in Germany. He trained as a violinist and
cellist, and was for several years a member of a theatre orchestra in
Prague. In 1741 or 1742 he entered the service of Count Rutowski in
Dresden, and by 1750 he was a violinist in the court orchestra. He
remained in Dresden until his death. Neruda is known to have composed at
least 97 works, although many are now lost. In the 18th century copies
of his works were disseminated throughout Bohemia, Germany and Sweden;
the Breitkopf catalogue advertised 68 works between 1762 and 1771. His
music shows clear signs of Italian influence, although in his use of
dynamics he was evidently also influenced by the Mannheim School. The
melodic style harks back to the Baroque principle of Fortspinnung,
though this is modified by the use of regular phrase lengths. The
textures are mostly homophonic, often with figured bass. The violin
works make great demands on the performer. Neruda was also active as a
teacher; two of his sons, Ludvík Neruda and Antonín Bedřich Neruda
(?-1797), became accomplished violinists and were members of the Dresden
court orchestra. According to Gottfried Johann Dlabacz, Neruda was a
brother of Jan Chryzostomus Neruda (1705-1763), who after a short period
as a violinist at a Prague theatre entered the Premonstratensian
monastery of Strahov in 1726, becoming succentor in 1733 and cantor and
choirmaster ten years later.
Georg Heinrich Bümler (1669-1745)
- Schaffe in mir Gott! ein reines | Herz φφ | à | 2 Violini | Viola |
4 Voci | Soprano, | Alto, | Tenore e | Basso, | Basso continuo | è |
Organo.
German singer, composer and theorist. As a founder-member with Lorenz
Mizler of the Leipzig Correspondierende Societät der Musicalischen
Wissenschaften, he was accorded a detailed necrology in Mizler’s Neu
eröffnete musicalische Bibliothek, iv (1745). This states that he was
born near Bayreuth in Berneck, where his father served as Kantor before
moving to Naila as a manager of mines. At ten, on the death of his
father, Bümler was sent to Münchberg to become a student in the
Lateinschule. When he was about 13 he joined the Bayreuth court as a
chamber discantist, where he studied singing and keyboard instruments
with Ruggiero Fedeli. During the next two decades his exceptional talent
as a singer made possible an extensive career at Wolfenbüttel, Hamburg,
Berlin, and back again at Bayreuth. In 1698 he was appointed chamber
musician and solo alto at the court of Ansbach, where in 1717 he
succeeded Johann Christian Rau as Kapellmeister. In May 1722 he
accompanied his first wife, the singer Dorothea Constantia Bauer, to
Italy, but they were required to return to court in February 1723 for
the funeral of Margrave Georg Friedrich. Following his release from
court duties, he was briefly Kapellmeister to Queen Eberhardine of
Poland and Saxony at Pretsch, but for unknown reasons left for Hof
(Saale). In 1726 he regained his post as Kapellmeister at Ansbach. His
wife died in 1728 and he married the singer Sabina Sophia Schneider in
1729.
Italian composer, uncle and teacher of the famous composer Giacomo
Puccini. In 1849 he enrolled at the music school in Lucca where he
studied singing, organ, piano and violin lessons as well as composition
and counterpoint. In 1852 he became a pupil of Michele Puccini and in
1857 he graduated in composition. That year he was appointed as teacher
of harmony and organ as well as organist in different music schools in
Lucca. In 1863 he became an honorary member of the Società del quartetto
di Lucca. When Michele Puccini died in 1864, he replaced him as
professor of composition and counterpoint as well as chapel master and
organist at the Cathedral of Lucca. His musical role in the city became
then very prominent and was often awarded. He was also appointed as
teacher of the prestigious Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome. In 1875 he
was addmited as a member of the Bologna Philharmonic Academy and in 1877
he took over a professor position at the Liceo Musicale Benedetto
Marcello in Venice in a post he held the rest of his life. As a
composer, he mainly wrote sacred music among them several masses,
vespers, hymns and motets most of them with double choir and large
orchestra. He also left several symphonies and chamber works.
French composer and priest of Irish origin. His early years are unknown
but he probably was a choirboy at Verdun Cathedral. In 1719 he was
appointed 'maître de musique' at Meaux Cathedral but in 1726 he came
back to Verdun to work as the same post. In 1730 he was promoted master
of the choir school at Tours Cathedral and in the same post at Rouen
Cathedral from 1737 to 1741. He was honoured as ‘chanoine de St-Quentin’
in 1741 and in 1742 he succeeded André Campra as 'maître des pages de
la chapelle'. As a composer, he mainly wrote sacred music among them
four a cappella masses in contrapuntal style and 29 grands motets. He
also published the theoretical work 'Traité de contrepoint simple ou
chant sur le livre' (Paris, 1742).
Austrian organist and composer. Although born into a musical family,
little is known about the details of his early life, save that he was a
chorister at Klosterneuberg, where he no doubt learned enough about
music to become an organist there around 1731. His other positions were
at the monastery in Melk and subsequently around 1736 at the Karlskirche
in the Viennese suburb of Wieden. He was also active at the Holy Roman
court, where his instrumental music was extremely popular. His life was
cut short prematurely by a lung ailment, probably pneumonia, although he
suffered from ill health his entire life. His most important student
was Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, probably for whom Monn created a
treatise titled Theorie des Generalbasses in Beispielen ohne Erklärung,
which remained unpublished. His works include 16 symphonies, eight
concertos (six for keyboard, one for violin, one for cello, plus another
arrangement of a harpsichord concerto for cello or contrabass),
partitas, three fanfares, and three preludes and fugues for organ. His
style represents the infusion of the homophonic texture, contrasting
themes of the early sonata principle, and fundamental modulatory
patterns that reflect the predominant style of the late 18th century. He
was also one of the first to create the fourmovement symphony by adding
a minuet in one of his works. His brother Johann Christoph Monn
(1726-1782) was also a composer and teacher.
François Krafft (1733-c.1800)
- Sinfonia (IV, Es-Dur) a quattro aus 'VI Sinfonie a quattro cioè
violino primo, violino secondo, alto viola, basso continuo, con duoi
corni da caccia ad libitum ... opera prima' (1756)
Performers: Les Agrémеns; Florian Hеyеrick (conductor)
Flemish harpsichordist and composer. Son of Jan-Laurens Krafft, a poet,
writer, music publisher and composer of German descent, and Elisabeth
Van Helmont, he probably studied composition under Francesco Durante in
Italy, where he won a prize with his motet 'In convertendo'. Some
sources stated that he was a conductor in Brussels around 1760 and from
1770 to 1783 at the Royal Chapel there. On 7 April 1769 he was appointed
organist at the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, a post he held until 23
August 1794. Besides, the survival of manuscripts of his religious works
at the collegiate church of Sts Pierre et Guidon in Anderlecht and at
the St Jacobskerk in Antwerp may cast some light on his activities. As a
composer, he mainly wrote sacred music, among them, several masses,
motets and psalms. He also left the opera 'Le faux astrologue' (1763), a
collection of flute sonatas, six divertimenti, keyboard pieces and 'VI
Sinfonie a quattro' (1756). His uncle was the engraver and printer
Jean-Laurent Krafft (1694-1768) and his cousin the organist and composer
François-Joseph Krafft (1721-1795).
