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.
Bohemian composer. Very few details are known about his life. He is only
mentioned as a composer of the 18th century in the “Lexicon of
Biographical and Bibliographical Sources” by Robert Eitner (1903). Based
on recent studies it is now assumed that he belonged to the socalled
“bohemian musicians”, who came in the 18th century to the German courts
in the region of the middle Rhine. Adam Bernhard Gottron listed (1971)
among the immigrant courtmusicians who composed in Mainz, Nikolaus
Stulick, who died in that city in 1732. Among his extant works, two
symphonies, six concertos, several trios and sonatas, and a pastorella.
Austrian organist and composer. He was born as the son of a judicial
procurator in Reichenhall, on the Bavarian side of the border. From the
fact that at his death in 1684 it was mentioned that he was 55 years of
age, we can conclude that he was born in 1628 or 1629. He was educated
at the Benedictine University in Salzburg. There he probably received
music lessons from Abraham Megerle or the cathedral organist Marzellus
Isslinger. He also studied theology and was ordained priest in 1653. His
first musical position was that of organist at the Benedictine
monastery of St Lambrecht near Murnau in Styria. In 1654 he was
appointed vice-Kapellmeister at the court in Salzburg and in 1679 was
promoted to Kapellmeister. From 1666 until his death he was also
Kapellmeister at Salzburg Cathedral. As a composer, his output include 4
masses, 2 Magnificat settings, 2 Te Deum settings, 12 offertories, 5
Psalms and 3 litanies. His pieces for solo voice suggest the influence
of Monteverdi and other Italian composers who cultivated monodic music,
whereas some of his larger works reflect the so-called ‘colossal’ style,
as seen in the Missa Salisburgensis by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.
Austrian composer. Following training as a chorister in the Jesuit
school in Vienna, where he befriended Johann Michael Haydn and Johann
Georg Albrechtsberger, he became an initiate in the Augustinian Order in
1753 and was ordained as a priest in 1757. At that time he was
appointed as regens chori of the monastery of St. Florian, where he
lived the rest of his life. His music circulated widely during his
lifetime, where it achieved a reputation for good command of
counterpoint, as well as the prevalent Neapolitan sacred musical style.
His 'Missa profana', sub-titled ‘a mass to satirize stuttering, bad
singing and the onerous office of a schoolmaster’, is attributed to
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and to Florian Gassmann in two Viennese copies,
but a manuscript of the work in Göttweig and a notice in the Vienna
Nationalbibliothek show it to be Aumann’s. His two 'Missae brevissimae'
are little disguised comments on the Josephian reform movement and his
'Missa Germanica' was one of the earliest Mass settings in the
vernacular. His works include 38 Masses, 12 Requiems, 29 Psalms, 25
Magnificats, 22 offertories, 10 litanies, eight responsories, seven
vespers, many other sacred motets and arias, four oratorios, two
Singspiels in Austrian dialect, numerous songs and canons, three
symphonies, and 25 serenades, divertimentos, and parthies. His music was
a distinct influence on Anton Bruckner who studied Aumann's
counterpoint.
German organist and composer. In 1795 he moved to the Jesuit Gymnasium
in Munich where he was a student of Joseph Schlett. From 1801 he studied
theology at the university of Landshut and one year later he settled in
Italy to study with Giovanni Simone Mayr in Bergamo. After further
training in Vicenza (1803-11), Venice, and Milan, he served as second
'maestro di cappella' to the viceroy of Milan. Upon his return to
Munich, he was made 'maestro al cembalo' of the Italian Opera in 1819.
In 1823 he became assistant of the Kapellmeister at the Royal National
Theater, and in 1826 Bavarian court Kapellmeister. In 1833 he was sent
by the Crown Prince Maximilian to Italy to collect old church music.
Together with Michael Hauber, the prebend of St Kajetan, and Caspar Ett,
he was influential in the revival of church music. He retired in 1864.
As a composer, he was very prolific. His output include two operas,
including 'Rodrigo und Chimene' (1821), 3 ballets, 43 Latin masses, 8
German masses, 8 Requiems, 130 secular songs, and over than 300 small
sacred pieces. He also left few instrumental works. Aiblinger’s early
large-scale masses with instrumental accompaniment show the influence of
Italian opera. From 1825 to 1833 he developed a transitional style with
frequent a cappella sections and more colla parte instrumentation. From
1830 he composed more smaller-scale works and the orchestral masses
were replaced by Landmessen.
Bohemian composer and conductor. His father, a choirmaster, taught him
singing and the violin and he later studied the organ and thoroughbass
with Haparnorsky, a church organist and composer. Then he studied
philosophy and law in Prague. He subsequently became secretary to Count
Franz von Funfkirchen, to whom he dedicated his first six symphonies, a
set in Haydnesque style (1783). He was also a member of his private
orchestra. During his first visit to Vienna, in either late 1785 or
1786, he made the acquaintance of Joseph Haydn, Carl Ditters von
Dittersdorf, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
he developed a warm relationship with Mozart, who performed one of his
symphonies at a subscription concert. He then became secretary and music
master to Prince Ruspoli, who took him to Italy. While in Rome
(1786-87), he composed a set of six string quartets, the first of his
works to be published. After leaving Ruspoli's service, he studied with
Giovanni Paisiello and counterpoint with Nicola Sala in Naples. He made a
brief visit to Paris in 1789, and then proceeded to London, where he
met and befriended Joseph Haydn, who was also visiting the British
capital. During his London sojourn, he was commissioned by the Pantheon
to write an opera, 'Semiramis'. Unfortunately, the theatre burnt down in
January 1792, and his music was either destroyed or never completed. He
returned to the Continent in 1793; in 1804 he became composer and
conductor of the Vienna Hoftheater, where he produced such popular
operas as 'Agnes Sorel' (1806) and 'Der Augenarzt' (1811). He also wrote
'Il finto Stanislao' (1818), to a libretto by Felice Romani, which
Giuseppe Verdi subsequently used for his 'Un giorno di regno'. He
likewise anticipated Richard Wagner by writing the first opera on the
subject of Hans Sachs's life in his 'Hans Sachs im vorgerückten Alter'
(1834). He retired from the Hoftheater in 1831, and his fame soon
dissipated; he spent his last years in straitened circumstances and
relative neglect, having outlived the great masters of the age. As a
composer, he was very prolific and his music includes 28 operas, 17
ballets, 11 Masses, two vespers, numerous other shorter sacred works,
around 60 symphonies (of which 40 were published), two keyboard
concertos and three sinfonia concertantes, three flute quartets, around
60 string quartets, 30 trios, 40 violin sonatas, 47 Lieder, and other
smaller chamber works. Although he was best known during his early
career as a composer of symphonies whose progressive structure, good
sense of melody, and interesting orchestration were lauded, his later
career after 1800 involved the stage, for which he composed nationalist
works such as the mentioned 'Hans Sachs im vorgerückten Alter'.
Swiss composer and violinist. Son of the violinist Philippe Fritz
(1689-1744) and Jeanne Guibourdance, he received his first violin
lessons from his father. In the 1730s he studied in Turin with Giovanni
Battista Somis, a former pupil of Arcangelo Corelli. After returning to
Geneva, he married to Charlotte Foix (c.1714-1779) in 1737. In the same
year several young English aristocrats settled in Geneva after having
gone on their Grand Tour to Italy. They were used to meet at a salon
called the Common Room of Geneva, and despite Geneva being strictly
Calvinist at the time they were not prevented from organising
extravagant cultural events, such as theatrical performances and
pantomimes, between 1738 and 1743. These well-educated young Englishmen,
who termed themselves “The Bloods”, also invited representatives of the
local upper classes to their events. The young Gaspard Fritz directed a
small orchestra that provided their musical entertainment, and he will
presumably also have taken the opportunity to perform works of his own.
In 1756 he went to Paris for the publication of several of his works and
12 March and 18 April he appeared at the Concert Spirituel, but his
Italian style of playing acted against his success. In 1770, Charles
Burney met Fritz in Geneva. Burney remarks that Fritz had taught the
violin to several of his friends, which suggests that in his younger
days he had given lessons to members of the “Bloods”. Burney’s record of
their conversation reveals that Fritz was busy preparing the
publication of his 'Sei sinfonie a piu stromenti'. These symphonies were
published in Paris in the early 1770s. Burney was delighted at the news
of their imminent publication and promptly ordered two copies from the
composer. Gaspard Fritz only wrote instrumental music. His output
include a few collections of works, among them, flute sonatas, violin
sonatas, trio sonatas, six duets for two violins, the mentioned VI
symphonies, a violin concerto as well as a missing harpsichord concerto.
The printed opus collections were published between 1742 and 1772 in
Geneva, Paris and London. There have been a number of copies preserved,
especially as far as the sonata prints are concerned, in Danish and
Swedish libraries, but also in Brussels, Berlin and Berkeley, which is
evidence of how widespread and popular his music was during his
lifetime.
Walloon violinist and composer. Son of Jean-François Vieuxtemps
(1790-1866), he received early lessons from his father, a weaver and
amateur violin-maker. He made his concert debut at the age of six and
toured neighbouring cities with his teacher Joseph Lecloux-Dejonc,
attracting the attention of Charles-Auguste de Bériot in the process.
Two years later he went to Brussels to study with de Bériot, who
introduced him to Parisian audiences in 1829 with great success. After
de Bériot’s teaching ended in 1831, his sister-in-law, the singer,
pianist and composer Pauline Garcia, also assisted in Vieuxtemps’s
continuing musical education. After giving a series of concerts in
Germany and Austria, winning praise from Robert Schumann, who heard him
in Leipzig, he made his debut in London in 1834, where he also heard and
met Niccolò Paganini. He was anxious to perfect his technique and
broaden his musical tastes, but seems to have picked up a lot of his
skill in composition piecemeal as he embarked on the busy,
country-hopping career of a travelling virtuoso. In Vienna, where he was
the first to revive Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, he took composition
lessons from Simon Sechter, and in Paris from Antoine Reicha. The first
of his seven violin concertos dates from this time. He visited Russia
for the first time in 1837, and he toured America in 1843 and 1844. In
the latter year he married the Vienna-born pianist Josephine Eder, and
in 1846 settled for some years in St Petersburg as court violinist and
soloist in the Imperial Theatres as well as teaching violin at the
Conservatory. He left a lasting legacy there, for he had a definite
influence on the development of the Russian school of violin playing. In
1854 the leading Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick ranked Vieuxtemps
together with Joseph Joachim as the two foremost violinists in the
world. After a second American tour in 1857 with the pianist Sigismond
Thalberg, and further periods based successively in Brussels, Frankfurt
and Paris, he returned to Brussels in 1871 as professor of violin at the
Brussels Conservatoire, where his most celebrated pupil was Eugène
Ysaÿe. His career as a virtuoso was cut short by a stroke that affected
his bowing arm, but though he was acutely frustrated by his inability to
perform to his former standard, he managed to resume conducting and
teaching until 1879, when he resigned from the Conservatoire and joined
his daughter and son-in-law in Algeria. Here he completed his last two
violin concertos before his death on 6 June 1881; his body was brought
back to Belgium and he was buried with honours in his home town of
Verviers. His younger brothers Lucien Vieuxtemps (1828-1901) and Ernest
Vieuxtemps (1832-1896) were also musicians.
French-Belgian composer. He was born into a Walloon family. In early
childhood he displayed remarkable musical talent and reputedly possessed
a beautiful voice. From the age of six he sang at the collegiate church
of Walcourt. Shortly thereafter he was listed as a singer in the chapel
of Ste Aldegonde in Mauberge; while there he joined the chapel of St
Pierre and received instruction in the violin, harpsichord, harmony and
composition from its music director, Jean Vanderbelen. In 1742 he became
a chorister at Antwerp Cathedral, where he pursued further studies with
André-Joseph Blavier. He went to Paris in 1751 and in 1754 succeeded
Jean-Philippe Rameau as director of the orchestra of the wealthy amateur
La Pouplinière (or La Popelinière). There he came under the influence
of Johann Stamitz, the pre-Classical symphonist, who was briefly also in
La Pouplinière’s employ. In 1754 he performed the first of his 30
symphonies. Later, as musical director to the Prince de Condé, he also
composed operas, some of which were popular successes. In 1773 he became
director of the Concert Spirituel, and in 1795, on the founding of the
Paris Conservatory, he served as an inspector and teacher there until
1816. Throughout, he was in the foreground of Parisian musical activity,
founding his own orchestra and giving the first performance of a Haydn
symphony in Paris, supporting Christoph Willibald Gluck in his rivalry
with Niccolò Piccinni and writing copious amounts of music in support of
the French Revolution. He was a prolific composer, writing 48
symphonies, six sinfonia concertantes, 22 operas, four ballets, 12 trio
sonatas, six string quartets and six flute quartets, three Te Deums
(including a massive multimovement work from 1817), two oratorios, a
Requiem, three Masses, numerous smaller sacred works, a wind symphony,
and dozens of Revolutionary hymns, dirges, marches and cantatas. Gossec
was an experimenter in choral and orchestral writing. He expanded the
French orchestra to include horns and clarinets and experimented with
novel combinations of instruments and voices. His career reflects the
changing social position of the Parisian musician between the mid-18th
century and the early 19th Century. His son Alexandre François Joseph
Gossec (c.1760-after 1803) was also a composer.
Polish composer and pianist. Son of Ignacy Dobrzyński (1779-1841), a
musician at the court of Count Józef Iliński, he initially studied with
his father. Later he joined to the Warsaw Conservatory to study with
Józef Elsner, and where he had Frédéric Chopin as a fellow student. He
remained in Poland following the 1830 insurrection, earning his living
principally as a performer and teacher, and playing a valuable role in
the promotion of concert life in Warsaw. There were short-lived periods
of more permanent employment at the Instytut Wychowania Panień
(1841-43). During his pianistic tours in Germany (1845-47), he had great
success. By 1850 he came back to Warsaw where he assumed a post at the
Wielki Theatre (1852-53). He was dismissed from the theatre post,
apparently unable to accept the constraints imposed on his role as
director. In 1857 he founded 'Orkiestra Polska Ignacego Feliksa
Dobrzyńskiego', which comprised leading members of the orchestra of
Warsaw's Grand Theatre. In 1858-60 he participated in a committee
established to found a Music Institute. He also became a member of the
Lwów Music Society. As a composer, he was mainly regarded by his opera
'Monbar or The Filibuster' (1838) but he also wrote further stage music,
a Symphonie caracteristique (1834), a Piano concerto (1824), several
orchestral and chamber music, piano pieces, sacred music and songs. He
also published the piano method 'Szkoła na fortepian' (1845). His son
Bronisław Dobrzyński (fl. 1859-1893) was a composer and pianist.
German organist and composer. Son of the baker Bathold Kahle, he was
christened on 12 April 1668 at Sankt-Stephani-Kirche. Nothing is known
about his childhood and barely about his whole life. He was first
organist at Sankt-Stephani-Kirche in his native town and where he was in
touch with the composer Heinrich Bokemeyer. Later he was appointed
organist at Zellerfeld in a post he probably held the rest of his life.
As a composer, the only extant output is sacred, among them, several
cantatas, psalms and motets.
German composer. Like many German musicians of the first half of the
18th century, he came from the Thuringian-Saxon area. His father,
Valentin Molter, was a teacher and Kantor in the village of Tiefenort,
and he probably received his earliest musical education from him. From
1713, he attended the Tertia of the Latin School in Eisenach and became a
member of the school choir, which in those days produced quite a few
future professional musicians (instrumentalists, cantors, organists,
chapel masters). In the preceding year the choir had given a concert,
which was attended by eight members of the Bach family from Eisenach.
After leaving the Latin School in 1715, he vanishes from history for two
years. However, in 1717 he reappears when he is appointed a violinist
in the court chapel of Margrave Carl Wilhelm in Karlsruhe. In October
1719 the Margrave sent him off to Italy for two years, in order to
acquaint himself more with Italian music, to learn the Italian ways and
other skills and craftsmanship. He stayed in Rome and Venice, where he
became acquainted with the Marcello brothers, Alessandro and Benedetto,
as well as with Tomaso Albinoni and Antonio Vivaldi. He probably also
met Giuseppe Tartini. Upon his return to Karlsruhe in the year 1721 he
was appointed master of the court chapel. He held this post for slightly
over a decade, when in 1733 it was disbanded. Fortunately enough, the
position of chapel master of the court of Eisenach had just became
available, since the previous chapel master, Johann Adam Birckenstock,
had died earlier that year. He returned to his home country after having
successfully applied for the job. Here he became the artistic leader of
the court chapel, which had been established by Georg Philipp Telemann
in 1709 and which by then included nationally acclaimed instrumentalists
and singers. In 1737-38 he undertook another study tour to Italy and
visited Venice, Ancona, Foligno and Rome. After his return from Italy he
spent his most prolific years as a composer in Eisenach. In 1741,
however, this chapel was disbanded, too. Finally he returned to
Karlsruhe, where he took up his old function again in a post he held the
rest of his life. As a composer, his works include 170 symphonies, 47
concertos (including some of the earliest for clarinet), 17 pieces for
Harmonie (titled concertinos or sinfonias), around 100 chamber works
(trio sonatas, violin sonatas, etc.), numerous preludes for organ, an
oratorio and a 'drama per musica', 11 church cantatas, seven secular
cantatas in Italian, and a set of six violin sonatas. During his
lifetime, he was highly respected for his progressive style of
composition, being one of the earliest composers in Germany to write
almost completely in the galant style. He was known for his exploitation
of the solo instruments in numerous concertos and as being one of the
main figures in the early symphony.
Italian teacher and composer. In 1735 he entered at the Conservatorio
della Pietà dei Turchini, where his teachers included Lorenzo Fago and
Leonardo Leo. He remained in Naples all his life, and between 1745 and
1771 established himself as a composer of oratorios, operas, cantatas
and church music. On 11 July 1759 he succeeded Girolamo Abos as secondo
maestro of his former conservatory in a post he held until his death. On
25 August 1768 he was appointed as a 'maestro di cappella
soprannumerario' of the royal chapel in Naples. After the death of
Giuseppe de Majo, 'primo maestro' of the royal chapel, he assumed that
position on 21 December 1771. He also continued as 'maestro di musica
della regina', later becoming 'maestro di musica della real camera'. As a
teacher, his most notable student was Giacomo Tritto. As a composer,
the majority of his works were sacred in the lyrical Neapolitan style of
the mid-18th century. His output includes eight operas, 15 secular
cantatas, six oratorios, three Masses, six Kyries, a Requiem, four
motets, 12 Psalms, a litany, a Stabat mater (his best-known work), and
three antiphons.
German composer and pianist. Son Johann August Franz Burgmüller
(1766-1824) and brother of Friedrich Burgmüller (1806-1874), he was a
child prodigy who began composing at an early age. He received training
from his father, and in Kassel with Ludwig Spohr and Moritz Hauptmann.
During these years he made frequent appearances as a pianist and
composer. In 1831 he came back to Düsseldorf hoping to obtain,
unsuccessfully, a permanent appointment there. He was suffering very
frequent epileptic fits at this time, and his decline in social status
began, remaining in contact with only a few close friends including the
poet Christian Dietrich Grabbe. As a composer, he wrote two symphonies,
(the second one unfinished), a Piano concerto, chamber music, piano
pieces and songs. Burgmüller's compositions attracted an increasing
amount of attention, and won the approval of Felix Mendelssohn, who
performed his first symphony. But his social situation remained
insecure, and he was considering moving to Paris when he died of an
epileptic fit while staying at Aachen. In an impassioned obituary,
Robert Schumann wrote: ‘Since the early death of Franz Schubert, nothing
more deplorable has happened than that of Burgmüller’, and a funeral
march composed by Mendelssohn himself accompanied him to the grave.
Italian composer. Little is known of his early life and, like many
church composers working in late-eighteenth-century Rome, he has been
all but completely forgotten. The earliest extant and dated composition
is the Missa 'dilexisti iustitiam' (1776) which, probably a few years
later, helped him to be appointed chapel master at the church of San
Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome. In 1795 he assumed the same post at San
Antonio in Rome. The fact that several of his sacred compositions are in
manuscript form in the Archive of the Vatican Cappella Giulia and in
the Abbot Fortunato Santini collection, who collected, among many
others, especially the works of the most significant masters of sacred
music, leads one to believe that Bolis was very close to the environment
of the Papal Chapel, whose influence he certainly underwent. During the
carnival season of 1778-79, his intermezzi 'Li raggiri amorosi' was
performed at the Teatro di Tordinona. On 3 December 1801 he was
unanimously elected, with a salary of 80 scudi, chapel master at the
Rieti cathedral in a post he held the rest of his life. As a composer,
his output, mostly sacred, is preserved in manuscript and mainly in
three different sources: Santinibibliothek (Münster), the Music Archive
of San Giovanni in Laterano (Rome) and the Guildhall Library (London).
His music shows a wide variety of styles, from galant to the stile misto
and stile antico.
Bohemian composer, conductor and singer. Son of the composer Jan Tuček
(?-1783), he began his career both as a singer and as a conductor at the
Hybernia Theatre and later to the National Theatre in Prague as
harpsichordist. In 1797, he became the court Kapellmeister for the Duke
of Courland, Peter von Biron, in Sagan and Náchod. In 1799, he was
appointed Kapellmeister in Breslau and from 1806 to 1809, he worked at
the Leopoldstadt Theatre in Vienna and then in Budapest, where he
remained the rest of his life. As a composer, he wrote operas, operettas
and singspiels as well as symphonies, concertos and church music. His
compositions, though largely overshadowed by more famous contemporaries,
were well-regarded in his time and showcased his command of musical
forms. His son was the composer František Tuček (1782-1850), whose
daughter Leopoldine Tuček (1821-1883) was an opera singer.
Austrian composer. After being ordained a priest in 1874, he deepened
his musical studies with Franz Xaver Haberl and Michael Haller at the
Regensburg School of Church Music. His training at this institution, a
center of the Cecilian Movement, would shape his
compositional style. In 1885, he was appointed Kapellmeister at Brixen
Cathedral. His tenure there was marked by numerous honors, including
being named an honorary citizen of Brixen in 1905, a monsignor in 1906,
and a cathedral canon in 1917, the year of his retirement. As a
composer, he wrote over 200 works, mostly sacred. They are characterized
by their adherence to the ideals of the Cecilian Movement, which sought
to restore the purity and simplicity of early Christian music. However,
his works also exhibit a highly personal and expressive style, blending
traditional forms with innovative harmonies and melodies. He made
significant contributions to the field of sacred music, particularly
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
