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.
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.
German composer, professor, and historian. His earliest education was in
Coburg, with local Kantor Johann Heinrich Schulthesius, following which
in 1766 he attended the Johannischule in Lüneberg. Shortly thereafter
he moved to Schwerin to become assistant conductor of the cathedral
choir. Noticed by Duke Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he was given a
stipend to study at Göttingen University beginning in 1769. A year
later he was awarded the post of university organist, receiving his
doctorate in 1787. The following year he published his 'Allgemeine
Geschichte der Musik' followed in 1792 by the 'Allgemeine Litteratur der
Musik', both of which established him as a major
historian-bibliographer of the period. His correspondence with the sons
of Johann Sebastian Bach led him to create over a period of several
decades one of the first biographical studies, published in 1802 as
'Über Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke' as part of an
attempt to bring out Bach’s complete works. His scholarly studies often
overshadowed his work as a composer. Surviving works include 22 Lieder,
five keyboard concertos, seven trio sonatas, four large cantatas or
odes, and several sets of variations and smaller keyboard works. His
musical style tends to follow the norms of the period, with particular
influence of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He is generally regarded as one
of the founders of modern musicology.
Portuguese composer and teacher. On 28 October 1753 he began music
studies at the Colégio dos Santos Reis in Vila Viçosa. A royal grant
enabled him to enrol on 15 January 1761 at the Conservatorio di S
Onofrio in Naples, where he studied with Cotumacci. In 1766 his setting
of Metastasio’s La Nitteti was performed in Rome. On returning to
Portugal he joined the Irmandade de S Cecília at Lisbon on 22 November
1767. In the same year he was appointed professor of counterpoint in the
Seminário da Patriarcal, where he later served as mestre (1769-73) and
as mestre de capela (1773-98) and taught such noted musicians as António
Leal Moreira, Marcos António Portugal and João José Baldi. In 1778 he
succeeded David Perez as music teacher to the royal family. Upon
retirement from the Seminário da Patriarcal he owned extensive
properties in both the Algarve and Alentejo. Carvalho was the foremost
Portuguese composer of his generation, and one of the finest in the
country’s history. His numerous elaborate church works in the style of
Jommelli display a thorough control of counterpoint and structure, with
keen, assertive melodic writing in the fast movements. He is equally
distinguished as a composer of opere serie and serenatas, of which 14 by
him were performed at the royal palaces of Ajuda and Queluz.
Italian composer and cellist. He was the third child of the musician
Leopoldo Boccherini (1712-1766) and his wife Maria Santa, née Prosperi
(?-1776). When he reached the age of 13, he was sent to Rome to study
with the renowned cellist Giovanni Battista Costanzi, musical director
at Saint Peter’s Basilica. In Rome Boccherini was influenced by the
polyphonic tradition (i.e., music with two or more interweaving melodic
parts) stemming from the works of Giovanni da Palestrina and from the
instrumental music of Arcangelo Corelli. In 1757 Boccherini and his
father were invited to play in the Imperial Theatre orchestra in Vienna.
On his second journey to Vienna (1760), Boccherini, at 17, made his
debut as a composer with his Six Trios for Two Violins and Cello, G
77–82. During his third stay in that city (1764), a public concert by
Boccherini was enthusiastically received. In August 1764 he obtained a
permanent position in Lucca with the local church and theatre
orchestras. He was in Lombardy in 1765, in the orchestra of Giovanni
Battista Sammartini. Through his association with this Milanese
composer, the 22-year-old Boccherini strengthened the new
“conversational” style of the quartet: the cello’s line was now as
important as the counterpoint (i.e., the intertwining of independent
melodic lines) of the violin and viola. Boccherini put together the
first public string quartet performance, with an extraordinary string
quartet made up of outstanding Tuscan virtuosos, including himself,
Pietro Nardini, Nardini’s pupil Filippo Manfredi, and Giuseppe Cambini.
After the death of his father (1766), Boccherini left Lucca for Paris,
which was at that time particularly hospitable to Italian musicians.
According to tradition, it was the Spanish ambassador to Paris who
persuaded Boccherini to move (probably in 1768 or early 1769) to Madrid,
where he began his long sojourn at the intrigue-ridden court of Charles
III. The king’s brother, the infante Don Luis, conferred on him a
yearly endowment of 30,000 reals as a cellist and composer. Boccherini
first began writing string quintets during this period, and he also
wrote his well-known Six String Quartets (1772). At about the same time,
he married Clementina Pelicho, with whom he had five children. In 1785,
when both Clementina and the infante died, the king granted him a
pension of 12,000 reals, after which he was free to accept the patronage
of (among others) Frederick William II of Prussia, who was an amateur
cellist and well acquainted with Boccherini’s music. Boccherini married
Joaquina Porreti in 1787. From 1787 to 1797 he may have been in Berlin,
at a post provided by Frederick William II, although this position has
not been adequately documented; it seems equally likely that he remained
in Spain. In 1798 the new king of Prussia refused to extend
Boccherini’s pension, the duchess of Osuna (another important source of
income) moved to Paris, and Boccherini’s financial distress was
aggravated by poor health. His life was further saddened by the death of
two of his daughters in 1802 and the death of his second wife and a
third daughter in 1804. Reportedly, he was by then living in near
poverty, although his financial plight may have been exaggerated.
Certainly, however, his own health suffered from his personal losses,
and he died in 1805 of a long-standing respiratory ailment.
