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.
Austrian composer and oboist. Son of Josef Malzat (1723-1760), he
studied with his father. In 1774 he obtained a position as oboist in the
court orchestra in Salzburg, becoming a student of Johann Michael
Haydn. In 1778 he toured central Europe before settling in Bolzano, but
in 1788 he obtained the post of principal oboe at the court of the
Prince-Archbishop of Passau. As a composer, his extant works include
concertos for cello, oboe, two oboes, and oboe and bassoon. He also left
a sextet, a quintet, a cassation and three wind partitas. His music
reflects the style of his teacher, but it has been little studied. His
brother Johann Michael Malzat (1749-1787) was a cellist and composer.
German organist and composer, active in Sweden. The son of a
schoolmaster and church organist in Klein-Schmalkalden, he received his
first musical education with the Schmalkalden organist Johann Gottfried
Vierling. He studied in Leipzig from 1776, and then worked as a music
conductor in theatres in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg (1778-80). In
1781, he moved to Stockholm at the invitation of the German congregation
there (Tyska kyrkan) to assume the position of organist, which he held
until 1793. The same year, he was employed at the Royal Theatre in
Stockholm as well as conductor of the orchestra for the Stenborg
theatres. In 1786 he was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal
Orchestra (hovkapellet) and from 1795 to 1807 he held the post of
hovkapellmästare. He was also an instructor at Dramatens elevskola. He
was married twice, first to the Swedish actress and singer Elisabeth
Forsselius. Since king Gustaf IV Adolf closed the Royal Opera and its
orchestra in 1807, he moved to Uppsala, where he 1808 was appointed
Director musices of the university and simultaneously was employed as
organist of the cathedral. In Uppsala he organized the studentsång
(four-voice male choir singing). This practice rapidly spread to the
other Nordic universities and is still today a coveted tradition, not
only among university students, but for the last century also in many
male choirs all over Sweden. Hæffner's passion and work for this has
rendered him the name Studentsångens fader. As a composer, he wrote
three operas, among them the well-known 'Electra', theatre music, a
mass, one symphony (1795), three Overtures (c.1798-1823), keyboard and
chamber works, songs with piano accompaniment, and was responsible for
the new Swedish chorale book in 1819. Noteworthy is his oratorio
'Försonaren på Golgatha'. His music is heavily influenced by the German
Sturm und Drang.
Italian composer and organist. Nothing is known about his early years.
He may have been appointed to his first musical position at the age of
17, at San Pietro, Guastalla, serving Ferrante III, Duke of Guastalla.
After his ordination to the priesthood he became maestro di cappella and
organist of San Andrea, Mantua, in 1641. In 1648 he was appointed the
same post at the Accademia della Morte in Ferrara and at the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in 1653. He returned to his old job in
Ferrara in April 1657 and then was elected to the post where he would
make his reputation, maestro di cappella at San Petronio, Bologna, in
late 1657. He instituted a regular choir of 35 singers and a group of
well-paid instrumentalists for the liturgy at San Petronio, but despite
the audible improvements he made and the reputation he built, his tenure
there was marked by politically motivated controversies over the syntax
in his sacred compositions. The vestry supported him, but he was
finally forced out in June 1671. He went to Mantua to serve the Gonzaga
family as maestro di cappella di camera and the cathedral as maestro di
cappella in a post he held the rest of his life. As a composer, he
reformed the 'cappella musicale' at the church of San Petronio in
Bologna and established its reputation as a center of excellent music in
general and as the origin of the sonata for trumpet and strings in
particular with his Opus 35 (1665). He published 10 volumes of
instrumental music, including the first violin sonatas published by a
San Petronio composer, his Opus 55 (1670). There are also 10 volumes of
secular vocal music, 4 lost operas, 11 lost oratorios, and 46 volumes of
sacred music.
Italian composer, singer, violinist and music publisher. Of noble birth,
he had his debut as a composer in Venice in 1789 with 'Aci e Cibele'.
While still in Venice he wrote a double bass concerto for the young
virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti; the manuscript survives, together with
Dragonetti's additional variations on the final Rondo, which he
evidently considered too short. In 1791 he moved to London, where he
became well known as a singer. In 1794 he had a position in Bath as a
violinist and editor of the journal The Open Music Warehouse. In about
1800 he entered into partnership with the Italian music publisher
Tebaldo Monzani. Together they issued periodical collections of Italian
and English vocal music, and, as The Opera Music Warehouse, they
published Mozart's great operas, advertising that ‘any of the songs,
Duetts, Trios, Overtures … may be had Single & the whole of Mozart's
Pianoforte Compositions, published in Numbers’. Many of these were
arranged or provided with piano accompaniments by Cimador. As a
composer, his music reflects late 18th-century styles. This includes
three operas, two canzonetts, a contrabass concerto, a hornpipe for
keyboard, and numerous arrangements of the works of others.
German composer and organist. Elder brother of Johann Krieger
(1652-1735), Johann Mattheson told the following about his early musical
training in Nuremberg: ‘In his eighth year [he] began clavier lessons
with Johann Drechsel [Johannes Dretzel], a pupil of Froberger; he also
received instruction on various other instruments from the famous
Gabriel Schütz’. According to Doppelmayr ‘he progressed so rapidly in
this [clavier lessons] that already at the age of nine he amazed large
audiences with his playing; moreover, he was able to play any melody
that was sung to him and to perform well-made arias that he himself had
written’. At the age of 14 or 16 he went to Copenhagen to study organ
playing with the royal Danish organist Johannes Schröder and composition
with Kaspar Förster. Declining a position as organist at Christiania
(Oslo) he returned to Nuremberg after a stay of four or five years in
Copenhagen. He cannot have remained long in Nuremberg, for Mattheson
reported, confusingly, that he was both at Zeitz in 1670-71 and organist
and later Kapellmeister at the court at Bayreuth between 1670 and 1672.
When Margrave Christian Ernst left the Bayreuth court in 1673 to join
the war against France, he was given permission to travel to Italy
without loss of salary. He probably stayed there for about two years.
Mattheson stated that in Venice he studied composition with Johann
Rosenmüller and the clavier with G.B. Volpe, and that in Rome he studied
composition with A.M. Abbatini and the clavier and composition with
Bernardo Pasquini. Immediately after his visit to Italy he played for
the Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, in return for which, in a letter dated
10 October 1675, the emperor ennobled him and all his brothers and
sisters. He soon left Bayreuth for Frankfurt and Kassel and was offered
positions in both cities. He apparently refused them or held them for
only a short time, for on 2 November 1677 he accepted a position as
organist at the court at Halle. When Duke August died in 1680 his
successor, Johann Adolph I, moved the court to Weissenfels. He went with
him as Kapellmeister, a position he held until his death. After his
death his son Johann Gotthilf Krieger (who succeeded his father as
Kapellmeister until 1736) continued the catalogue until 1732. Johann
Philipp Krieger was one of the outstanding German composers of his time,
especially of church cantatas, of which he wrote over 2000 (nearly all
lost); under his direction the cultivation of music at the small court
at Weissenfels rose to the highest level of German court music.
