Giuseppe Jozzi (c.1710-c.1784)
- Sonata per cimbalo
Performers: Vаnia dаI Mаso (cembalo)
Further info: Il Clavicembalo a Venezia
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Italian singer, harpsichordist and composer. A castrato soprano, he regularly appeared on Roman stages from 1729 to 1740; some librettos describe him as ‘virtuoso della duchessa di Gravina’. In 1730 he was listed as a member of the association of Roman musicians, the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia. Between 1740 and 1745 he sang in Venice, Milan and Bologna. In 1745 he came to London, where, as second soprano at the opera in the Haymarket, he was heard by Charles Burney, who later described him as ‘a good musician with little voice’. Jozzi brought over some harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Alberti, whose pupil he claimed to be, and, passing them off as his own compositions, performed them with great success. Burney wrote of a ‘neatness and precision that were quite new in England at that time’ and ‘an accent, a spring and smartness in Jozzi's touch’. Jozzi had eight of Alberti's sonatas published under his own name, but the plagiarism was soon discovered and the sonatas were brought out by John Walsh Jr. in 1748 under their real composer's name. Jozzi moved to Stuttgart, where he sang in the court opera between 1750 and 1756; an appearance in Venice in 1753 is also recorded. The Alberti sonatas were republished under Jozzi's name in Amsterdam in 1761 and 1765, but no convincing evidence has been cited in support of a commonly held belief that, having given up the stage, he finally settled in Amsterdam and practised as a teacher. Jozzi's own harpsichord sonatas are very close in general style to Alberti's, belonging to the most advanced current of mid-century Italian galant writing.
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