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.
German writer, composer, and jurist. After studying law and serving as a
legal assessor in Poznan, he pursued formal musical training under the
organist Christian Podbielski. His professional career in music included
tenures as music director at the Bamberg theater and opera conductor in
Leipzig and Dresden (1813-14) before he permanently relocated to Berlin
in 1814. Utilizing the pseudonym Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, he
contributed a series of influential essays to the Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung, which were subsequently compiled in the collection
Phantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier (1814). Hoffmann's literary output,
characterized by the use of the fantastic, exerted a profound influence
on the Romantic school of literature and indirectly shaped the evolution
of German musical composition. As a composer, his catalog includes
several operas, the ballet Harlekin, a symphony, and various chamber
works, including a piano trio and four piano sonatas; while historically
neglected, these works are noted for their technical originality.
Furthermore, he was an accomplished artist known for his sketches and
caricatures, as well as a music critic whose analytical reviews provided
a rigorous theoretical framework for Romantic aesthetics. His
multidisciplinary contributions significantly impacted subsequent
generations of European artists, writers, and musicians.
German monarch, patron of the arts, flautist and composer. His father,
Friedrich Wilhelm I, was alarmed at his son’s early preference for
intellectual and artistic pursuits over the military and religious. In
spite of being supervised day and night and in the face of his father’s
rages and corporal punishments, Frederick managed, partly through the
complicity of his mother and his older sister Wilhelmina, to read
forbidden books, to affect French dress and manners and to play flute
duets with his servant. As a seven-year-old he was permitted to study
thoroughbass and four-part composition with the cathedral organist
Gottlieb Hayne. Wilhelmina, also musically talented, joined him in
impromptu concerts. On a visit to Dresden in 1728 the prince was
overwhelmed at hearing his first opera, Hasse’s Cleofide; there he also
first heard the playing of the flautist J.J. Quantz, who soon thereafter
began making occasional visits to Berlin to give Frederick flute
lessons. The king tolerated such amusements for a while, but by 1730 his
disapproval had hardened to prohibition. On 4 August 1730, in his 18th
year, Frederick attempted to escape to England. The result was his
imprisonment and the beheading of one of his ‘accomplices’ in his
presence. Instead of breaking, the prince became more sober and
orthodox. In 1733 he reluctantly married the bride chosen for him,
Elisabeth Christina of Brunswick. He took command of a regiment and
immersed himself so thoroughly in statecraft that he eventually won the
confidence of even his father. But he had no intention of giving up his
interests: at his residence in Ruppin he maintained a small group of
instrumentalists; the occasional lessons with Quantz continued; he
appointed C.H. Graun as general court musician in 1735; and in 1736,
when he moved to Rheinsberg, 17 musicians moved with him, including C.H.
and J.G. Graun, Franz and Johann Benda, Christoph Schaffrath and J.G.
Janitsch.
When Frederick finally acceded to the throne on 31 May 1740 he plunged
into social and political reforms, military conquest and the
rehabilitation of Prussian arts and letters, all at once. Other agents,
such as Voltaire and Algarotti, were commissioned to engage actors and
dancers in Paris and more singers from Italy, along with machinists,
costumiers and librettists. Amid this ferment, when the Emperor Charles
of Austria died on 20 October, Frederick immediately began plans which
culminated in his invasion of Silesia, the first of the many military
campaigns through which he transformed Prussia into a great modern
state. When Graun returned to Berlin with his Italian troupe of singers
in March 1741, Frederick was on the battlefield. Indeed, in the first
years of his reign Frederick enlarged both Prussia’s geographical and
cultural boundaries, with equal verve. C.P.E. Bach, having already
performed regularly at Rheinsberg, joined the court orchestra officially
in 1740 as first cembalist; Quantz, released from his position in
Dresden, was appointed in 1741. Christoph Nichelmann was retained in
1744 as second cembalist. In 1754 some 50 musicians, excluding singers
for court intermezzos and members of the opera chorus, were in
Frederick’s employ. In addition to C.H. Graun as Kapellmeister and chief
composer for the opera, and J.F. Agricola as court composer. The new
opera house on the avenue Unter den Linden, whose replica still stands
in Berlin, was opened on 7 December 1742. From that date to the outbreak
of the Seven Years War in 1756, the standard season featured two new
operas by Graun and an occasional work by Hasse, composers who were the
foremost representatives of Italian opera in Germany. In the successful
but bitter Seven Years War (1756-63) Frederick gradually became ‘der
alte Fritz’, inflexible and reactionary. Instrumental music at the court
stagnated: Nichelmann left in 1756, C.P.E. Bach in 1767. From March
1756 to December 1764 no operas were produced at the Berlin Opera House;
and from the end of the war to Frederick’s death in 1786 almost all the
opera productions there were revivals of pre-war works.
Italian composer and harpsichordist primarily active in Venice during
the transition from the late Baroque to the Galant style. Nothing is
known about his life. As a composer, he left several harpsichord
sonatas. His musical language is characterized by the melodic elegance
and rhythmic clarity typical of the Venetian school, drawing stylistic
parallels to contemporaries such as Baldassare Galuppi and Domenico
Alberti.
Franciszek Perneckher (1712-1769)
- Vesperae Dominicales (C-Dur) â 9 Stromenti | Canto Alto Tenore
Basso | 2 Violini | 2 Clarini | Con | Organo | Pro Choro Clari Montis C.
Nro. 34
Performers: Anna Krawczyk (soprano); Piotr Olech (alto); Maciej Gocman
(tenor); Mirosław Borczyński (bass);
Polish violinist and composer. While much of his personal life remains
unknown, he was documented as a violinist and Kapellmeister at the
Pauline Monastery at Jasna Góra in between 1759 and 1768. He must have
been a unique musician when compared with other band members, as at 250
złoties his remuneration ranked among the highest in the ensemble’s
history. Although early thematic catalogues, such as the one by Paweł
Podejko, originally attributed six Masses to him, modern musicological
research, including handwriting analysis and RISM database comparisons,
has confirmed that only two can be definitively attributed to
Perneckher: the Missa Nativitatis Domini in A and the Missa Nativitatis
in F. He also left, among others, two collection of Vesperae, two
sonatas, two symphonies, and Offertories. Other works formerly
associated with his name have since been reattributed to contemporary
composers like František Xaver Brixi or remain unidentified due to the
fragmentary state of the surviving sources.
