Giuseppe Sarti (1729-1802)
- Concertone per più strumenti obbligati
Performers: The Italian Chamber Orchestra; Newell Jenkins (1915-1996, conductor)
Further info: Italian Classical Symphonists
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Italian composer. Following violin study with Francesco Antonio
Vallotti, he became a pupil of Giovanni Battista Martini in 1739, being
elected to the Accademia filarmonica in 1743. In 1748 he was appointed
as musical director of the Faenza cathedral, only to resign a few years
later to concentrate on opera following the success of his 'Il re
pastore'. In 1753 he joined the Mingotti troupe as Christoph Willibald
von Gluck’s successor, traveling to northern Europe. He was subsequently
appointed as hovkapelmester at the court of Frederick V in Copenhagen
and spent the next 15 years there writing Danish Syngespile and seria.
In 1769 he left for London but was unable to make a success there,
eventually winning in 1770 a post as maestro di capella first at the
Conservatorio dell’Ospedale in Venice and in 1776 at the Milan
cathedral. In 1784 he was called to St. Petersburg by Catherine II,
traveling via Vienna, where his opera 'Fra i due litiganti' was an
enormous success. Although he was equally as successful in Russia, he
sometimes ran into political difficulties, spending large amounts of
time over the next two decades in Moscow or at the Golovin estate in
Ukraine. In 1802 he received a pension and attempted to return home to
Italy, only to pass away as he traveled through Berlin. As a composer,
his works include 75 operas; 12 large secular cantatas; four Masses and
numerous Mass movements; five Requiems; three Magnificats; three
Misereres; seven Te Deums; two complete Russian Orthodox liturgies;
seven oratorios; many motets, Psalms, and miscellaneous sacred works; 25
symphonies; three concertones; four sonatas for violin/flute; 13
keyboard sonatas; and numerous other smaller chamber works. He can be
considered one of the best known international figures of the 18th
century. His Italian operas (both seria and buffa) were performed
throughout Europe with great success, and he made significant
contributions to the development of music in both Denmark and Russia.
His Syngespil 'Soliman II' was considered the model upon which all
subsequent Danish works were to imitate. In Russia he not only composed
Russian opera, such as 'The Early Reign of Oleg' (to a text by Catherine
II), but also explored church music, writing oratorios using Old Church
Slavonic Orthodox melodies, as well as a spectacular Te Deum to
celebrate the victory at Ochakov, which uses a church carillon, a
Russian horn choir, and even cannon. He also wrote treatises on general
bass and harmony. His most important student was Luigi Cherubini, whom
he taught in Milan.