Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783)
- Concerto (D-Dur) a 4. Stromenti | Flauto Traversieri.
| Violino Primo | Violino Secondo | con | Cembalo o Violoncello
Performers: Ensemble Baroque Le Rondeau; Jean-Pierre Boullet (conductor)
Further info: Un Accademia A Napoli Nell' Anno 1725
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German composer. He was the second of five children of the organist
Peter Hasse (c.1668-1737) and Christina Klessing, daughter of a mayor of
Bergedorf. He studied in Hamburg before joining the opera company
there. He quickly established himself as a tenor of reputation, but his
career changed when his opera 'Antioco' opened at Brunswick on 1 August
1721. Soon, he left Germany for a long tour of Venice, Bologna,
Florence, and Rome, finally settling in the major opera center of Naples
for six years, until 1730. There he studied with Alessandro Scarlatti
and possibly Nicolo Porpora, worked with the superstar castrato Carlo
Broschi (Farinelli), and his rise in Neapolitan opera was spectacular.
Hasse appeared in Venice for the 1730 Carnival season, a milestone of
his career. In his opera 'Artaserse', he set a libretto of Metastasio,
later to become his most important collaborator, for the first time. He
also met in Venice another famous singer, the mezzo-soprano Faustina
Bordoni (1697-1781), whom he married in June 1730 and who created many
of the female protagonists in his later operas. Sometime after Carnival
but before Ascension in 1730, he was granted the title of Kapellmeister
to the court of the Elector August I of Saxony at Dresden, but he and
Faustina Bordoni did not arrive there until 6 or 7 July 1731. Although
this appointment lasted until 1763, the couple took frequent and
substantial leaves of absence to various cities of Italy and Vienna to
produce operas that had been commissioned by the nobility of Europe. In
1745, King Frederick the Great of Prussia visited and heard Hasse’s Te
Deum and opera seria 'Arminio'.
The king, a fine musician, thereafter often invited the composer and his
wife to Potsdam. The Prussian bombardment of Hasse’s Dresden house in
1760, causing the loss of many manuscripts, may have soured this
relationship. Porpora, possibly Hasse’s teacher in Naples, was brought
to Dresden in 1748 to teach the Princess Maria Antonia of Saxony and was
given the title Kapellmeister, but Hasse was promoted to
Oberkapellmeister in 1750. In 1763, Hasse joined the imperial court in
Vienna where he worked closely with Metastasio. In 1775, he and Faustina
Bordoni retired to Venice. Although most of his work was quickly
forgotten after he died, while active, he was the most renowned composer
of Italian opera seria in Italy and German-speaking lands. He composed
at least 58 operas, mostly seria, but also a few comedies, which were
produced in many European opera centers. He was the favorite composer of
the age’s most eminent opera librettist, Metastasio. Hasse composed
fluently, with a particular gift for vocal melody, which he generally
displayed to full advantage without distraction from contrapuntal
textures. Besides the operas, he composed about 11 intermezzi, 11
Italian oratorios, 60 Italian chamber cantatas, and 33 more cantatas for
voice and orchestra. His instrumental music includes 54 concertos,
mostly for transverse flute and strings, and 24 trio sonatas. He also
composed sacred music, most of it for four-voiced choir and orchestra:
15 masses, 2 requiems, 36 single mass ordinary settings, 10 mass
offertories, 21 psalms, 18 antiphons, six hymns, and 38 motets for solo
voice and orchestra.
