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.
Dutch composer, organist and carillonneur. His parents were Mennonites
from Haarlem who lived in Danzig from 1739 to 1752, when they moved to
Amsterdam. He was blind, and it may be assumed that he received his
musical instruction from the blind organist Jacob Potholt. From 1769
until his death he was carillonneur at the Oude Kerk and the
Regulierstoren (now Munttoren), Amsterdam. In 1780 he became organist of
one of the Mennonite communities in Amsterdam, the one usually called
‘bij het Lam en bij de Toren’, after the locations of its churches.
Focking taught the well-known blind Amsterdam organist and carillonneur
Daniël Brachthuyzer (1779-1832). His only known compositions are the 'VI
sonates pour le flute traverse solo, avec une basse continuo, oeuvre
première'. They follow the pattern of the mid-18th-century
three-movement solo sonata and their style resembles that of North
German composers. They were published privately by the composer, lack a
dedication and are undated. His son Cornelis Focking (1770-?) was also
an organist.
German composer and organist. Nothing is know of his early years. From
1650 he was organist of St Saviour, on the outskirts of Danzig. He soon
became Kantor and director of music at St Catherine; according to
Hermann Rauschning he was appointed in 1652, though he still described
himself as organist of St Saviour in publications up to 1654. In both
parishes he was required to teach in schools, and as director of music
at St Catherine he could rely on the services on average of eight
instrumentalists and six singers. It was to his directorship that the
church owed its prominent position in the musical life of Danzig.
Evidence of Bütner's activities and of the extensive and varied
cultivation of music in the Danzig of his day was afforded by a
collection of printed music, consisting of some 150 pieces, both
instrumental and vocal, by Italian, Polish and German composers and
including over 50 sacred vocal works by Bütner himself. His numerous
surviving works are very varied both in their forms and in the forces
for which they are scored, some of the latter being substantial. Most of
them are Lutheran settings of German words which introduced the sacred
concerto to Danzig. Typical features of his music include short-winded
motivic writing, simple harmony, a quick succession of short, compressed
sections and the setting off against each other of homophonic groups of
voices. The style of his music, even if it is somewhat inexpressive,
was something quite new in Danzig.
Polish violinist and composer. He probably received his initial training
in Warsaw, becoming a musician in the court orchestra of King Stanisław
August in 1777. In 1784 he decided to move to Vienna, where he
performed at various concerts for several years, and in 1787 he made his
debut at the Concerts spirituels in Paris. There he was also employed
in the orchestra of the duc d’Orléans. In 1792 he went to London, where
he appeared as violinist and composer, first at private concerts and
soon afterwards in public, mostly at Salomon’s concerts. His next London
appearances were apparently not until 1794. He also gave concerts in
other English cities, in Scotland and Ireland. In 1800 he married Miss
Eliza Breeze of Liverpool, where in 1801 he opened a 'Music, Musical
Instrument Warehouse', which traded until 1829; he also had a music shop
in London, 1810-12. In 1815 he moved to Edinburgh. He led the orchestra
in the first Edinburgh Festival in the same year and in subsequent
festivals (1819, 1824), and was an active teacher and organizer of
musical life. In February 1829 he gave his last public concert. As a
composer, his music is largely for his own instrument and consists of
five violin concertos and six trios for two violins and cello. The style
is reminiscent of Giovanni Battista Viotti. He left two talented
daughters, Felicia Janiewicz, a pianist, and Paulina Janiewicz, a
harpist.
Charles Dieupart (1676-1751)
- Suitte (II) de Clavessin des 'Six suittes de clavessin divisées en
ouvertures, allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gavottes, menuets,
rondeaux & gigues composées & mises
... dédiées à Madame la
Comtesse de Sandwich' (1701)
French harpsichordist, violinist and composer. Nothing is known of his
early years. Son of Nicolas Dieupart (?-1700), an ordinary musician to
Louis XIV's Grande Ecurie, at some point, he befriended Elizabeth Wilmot
of Rochester, countess of Sandwich, and Jacques Paisible who were
visiting James II of England in his exile at Saint-germain-en-Laye near
Paris. He is first heard of in England in an advertisement for a concert
at Drury Lane, London, on 11 February 1703, when he accompanied Gasparo
Visconti in some of Arcangello Corelli’s sonatas. According to John
Hawkins, he played the harpsichord and Nicola Francesco Haym the cello
in this and Giovanni Bononcini’s 'Il trionfo di Camilla' (1706), and he
wrote an overture and chaconne for Peter Anthony Motteux’s pasticcio
'Thomyris' (1707). He was evidently a prominent member of the Drury Lane
musical establishment. In the winter of 1707-1708 he was among those
involved in setting up a rival operatic project at the Queen’s Theatre
in the Haymarket, London, and wrote and arranged music for its first
production, Motteux’s pasticcio 'Love’s Triumph' (1708); Motteux wrote
in the preface that any success ‘will owe not a little to Mr Dieupart,
for his share in the Contrivance of the Entertainments and his supplying
what Recitative and other Music was necessary’. According to Hawkins,
Dieupart played continuo with Haym in Alessandro Scarlatti’s 'Pyrrhus
and Demetrius' (1708), and he played in the Haymarket orchestra until
about 17 November 1710, when he was apparently dropped. He did not
entirely retire from concert life: concertos by him were performed at
Drury Lane for ‘Two Hautboys and Two Flutes’ (14 March 1722), ‘Little
Flute’ (11 May 1722), ‘Hautboys, Flutes and Violins’ (15 May 1723), as
well as a trumpet sonata (14 May 1726). Hawkins wrote that Dieupart
‘grew negligent’ towards the end of his life, ‘and frequented concerts
performed in ale-houses, in obscure parts of the town, and distinguished
himself not more there, than he would have done in an assembly of the
best judges, by his neat and elegant manner of playing the solos of
Corelli’. His last known appearance was in Hampstead on 11 September
1724, when he played ‘Violin Concertino’ and was billed as ‘Capt Dupar,
Scholar to the late celebrated Signor Corelli, and late Musick Master to
his present Highness the Prince of Orange’.
