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.
French guitarist and composer. His father, also named François de Fossa,
was one of the most important historians of the province of Roussillon.
His early life little is known, left his native Perpignan in 1793 and
emigrated to Spain where he became a professional soldier. After an
active and varied career he retired from military service in 1844, by
which time he had been made a Chavalier of the Légion d'Honneur. Despite
his military duties he remained active with the guitar, as a composer
of better quality than most of his contemporaries in that field, an
arranger, copyist and player (he is credited with the discovery of
'artificial' (octave) harmonies); he was also the into-French translator
of the guitar method written by his close friend, Dionysio Aguado. In
1826, the Paris firm of Richault published de Fossa's three guitar
quartets, opus 19, probably his most well-known works.
English composer, conductor, writer on music and organist. He was the
fifth of nine children born to Richard and Ann Avison. Since his father,
a Newcastle town wait, was a practising musician, his musical training
probably began at home. Later, while in the service of Ralph Jenison, a
patron of the arts and MP for Northumberland from 1724 to 1741, he had
opportunity for further study. He had additional support in his musical
development from Colonel John Blathwayt (or Blaithwaite), formerly a
director of the Royal Academy of Music, the operatic organization in
London. There is no evidence that, as has been claimed, Avison went to
Italy, but William Hayes and Charles Burney wrote that he studied with
Geminiani in London. The earliest known reference to Avison's musical
activities is an announcement of a benefit concert on 20 March 1734 in
Hickford's Room, London. On 13 October 1735 he was appointed organist of
St John's, Newcastle, an appointment that took effect only in June
1736, when a new organ had been installed. On 20 October, on the death
of Thomas Powell, he became organist at St Nicholas (now the cathedral).
In July 1738 Avison was formally appointed musical director, beginning
with the fourth season; he retained the directorship of the Newcastle
Musical Society, as well as the post at St Nicholas, until his death. He
took part in other musical activities in Newcastle, including concerts
at the pleasure gardens and benefit concerts.
He also collaborated with John Garth in promoting a series of
subscription concerts in Durham, which were held on Tuesdays; theatre
productions in Newcastle and Durham were on Wednesdays, the Newcastle
concerts on Thursdays, and on Sunday evenings from about 1761 informal
concerts were given in a room added for the purpose to the St Nicholas
vicarage. Mondays and Fridays were reserved for Avison's private pupils
on the harpsichord, violin and flute. Some of the performers in the
Avison-Garth concerts included Giardini, Herschel, Shield, and Avison's
sons Edward and Charles. Although Avison was criticized for the
anti-Handelian remarks in his writings, Handel's music was well
represented in the Newcastle and Durham concerts. Burney wrote that
Avison was ‘an ingenious and polished man, esteemed and respected by all
who knew him; and an elegant writer upon his art’. Avison married
Catherine Reynolds on 15 January 1737. Three of their nine children
lived to adulthood: Jane (1744-73), Edward (1747-76) and Charles
(1751-95). Edward succeeded his father as organist of St Nicholas and
musical director of the Newcastle Musical Society, and was a friend of
John Wesley; Charles, who held various appointments as organist in
Newcastle, including that at St Nicholas from 1789 (succeeding Mathias
Hawdon), composed several works and published a hymn collection. The
Avison family is buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's, Newgate
Street, Newcastle. He was the most important English concerto composer
of the 18th century and an original and influential writer on music.
Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and writer on music. His brother
Joseph (1780-1849) was a prolific dramatist, librettist and writer.
Ignaz von Seyfried is said to have studied keyboard with Mozart and
Kozeluch, and composition with Albrechtsberger and Winter. He studied
philosophy in Prague in 1792-93, intending to take up law, but he
eventually devoted himself entirely to music. From 1797 he was a
conductor in Schikaneder's Freihaus-Theater auf der Wiedon, furnishing
it and later the Theater an der Wien with innumerable scores: the first,
Der Friede, was given in May 1797, the last in 1827, the year after he
resigned as Kapellmeister – though he continued to supply occasional
works and arrangements for other theatres. It has been estimated that
his music was heard on 1700 evenings in the Theater an der Wien alone.
He was on friendly terms with Beethoven, whose Fidelio he conducted at
its première in 1805, and his versatility won him a unique place in
Vienna's musical life; however, almost none of his music is marked by
real originality or distinction. Four of Seyfried's scores (including
his setting of Schikaneder’s Der Wundermann am Rheinfall, 1799, about
which Haydn wrote him a complimentary letter) were among the 12 most
often performed works in the Freihaus-Theater; many of his operas and
Singspiele for the Theater an der Wien also enjoyed frequent
performance. He was highly regarded not least for his biblical music
dramas, which include Saul (1810), Abraham (1817), Die Makabäer (1818)
and Noah (1819). Among his numerous arrangements were Ahasverus, der nie
Ruhende (1823) and Der hölzerne Säbel (1830), both based on melodies by
Mozart, and Rochus Pumpernickel (1809), a pasticcio by Stegmayer for
which the music was arranged by Seyfried and Jakob Haibel.
He also reorchestrated or composed numbers for many earlier works,
including La clemenza di Tito, Zémire et Azor, and C.P.E. Bach's
oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste (1817). Plays for which he wrote
incidental music include Schiller's Die Räuber (1808) and Die Jungfrau
von Orleans (1811), and Grillparzer's Die Ahnfrau (première, 1817).
Himself the author of music for several parodies, his opera Idas und
Marpissa (1807, text by Stegmayer) was parodied by Perinet and Tuczek
under the same title in 1808, both works proving highly popular. He also
wrote ballets, melodramas, cantatas, symphonies, songs, concertos,
marches, pieces for wind instruments and, especially after his
retirement from the post of musical director at the Theater an der Wien,
a quantity of chamber and church music, including nearly 20 masses,
countless smaller works and arrangements of sacred music (Palestrina,
Pergolesi, Handel, Mozart, the Haydns and Cherubini). Among his many
pupils, only the two later masters of the Viennese musical play and
operetta are remembered: Karl Binder (to whom he left his musical
collection) and Franz von Suppé. Connected with Seyfried's pedagogical
activities was his publication of Albrechtsberger's Sämmtliche Schriften
(1826), Preindl's Wiener Tonschule (1827) and Ludwig van Beethoven's
Studien im Generalbasse, Contrapuncte und in der Compositions-Lehre
(1832). A large number of Seyfried's works were published in Vienna, and
some in Germany; he also contributed articles and reports to the Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Cäcilia, and
Schilling's Encyclopädie. His works, in manuscript and in print, are in
the important libraries in Vienna.
German composer. Fischer came from a family of craftsmen and attended
the Piarist grammar school, or at least its final class, at
Schlackenwerth in the Egerland, the residence of Duke Julius Franz of
Saxe-Lauenburg. He must also have received a good basic musical
education there, for the Piarist order performed contemporary music in
its schools and churches and expected active participation from its
members. He may have been first taught composition by the Kapellmeisters
and court musicians Johann Hönel and Augustin Pfleger, and by Georg
Bleyer. Since Duke Julius Franz sent gifted musicians to receive further
training elsewhere, and had connections with the Dresden court, Fischer
may have acquired his high degree of contrapuntal skill from Christoph
Bernhard in Dresden. There is no evidence that he ever studied with
Lully in Paris. Lully's works were known and performed in Bohemia
through printed scores and from Georg Muffat's visit to Prague in 1677.
Fischer could have made an intensive study of them during his journeys
to Prague and Schloss Raudnitz on the Elbe in the course of his
professional duties. In 1689 or earlier Duke Julius Franz appointed
Fischer to succeed Pfleger as Kapellmeister in Schlackenwerth; his name
appears with that title in financial statements relating to the weddings
of the two princesses in 1690. After the partition of the state at the
end of 1690 Fischer may have been appointed Hofkapellmeister to Margrave
Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden. The margrave had married the heiress of
Schlackenwerth, Princess Sibylla Augusta, and made his residence there
at the time of the war with France. There is clear evidence of Fischer's
position in the titles of his printed works from 1695 onwards. The
court moved to Rastatt in 1705, but because of reductions in the
personnel during the war years Fischer did not accompany it. It was not
until October 1715, after a Piarist foundation had been set up in the
city, that he was finally given a post there, which he held until his
death. Fischer's link with the Augsburg publishing firm of Lorenz
Kroninger and Gottlieb Göbel, which issued his opp.1, 2, 3 and 5, was
probably provided by the cathedral organist Johannes Speth, the son of a
schoolmaster from Speinshart where there was a Premonstratensian
monastery. Speth may have met Fischer through the Premonstratensian
monastery of Tepl near Marienbad, bordering on the Schlackenworth
estates. He presented Fischer's op.1 to the cathedral chapter of
Augsburg in 1694, and his op.3 in 1701, and in a letter he mentioned
making corrections to op.3. In 1691 Fischer married Maria Franziska
Macasin, daughter of the mayor of Joachimsthal. His young wife's
background, and the identity of his children's godparents, show that he
was highly regarded in the circles where he moved. After his first
wife's early death in 1698 Fischer re-married, probably at the beginning
of 1700, and this marriage lasted until 1732.
Portuguese organist and composer. Almost nothing is known about his life
and career. He was active as organist and composer of Patriarcal de
Lisboa a post he held, at least, until 1831. As a composer, he mainly
wrote sacred music, among them, a Missa a 4 concertada e breve (1790),
several psalms, responsorios and motets. His music was appreciated since
the manuscripts are preserved in Lisbon, Evora, Ajuda and Sao Paulo
(Brazil).
