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.
Austrian organist and composer. Although born into a musical family,
little is known about the details of his early life, save that he was a
chorister at Klosterneuburg, where he no doubt learned enough about
music to become an organist there around 1731. His other positions were
at the monastery in Melk and subsequently around 1736 at the Karlskirche
in the Viennese suburb of Wieden. He was also active at the Holy Roman
court, where his instrumental music was extremely popular. His life was
cut short prematurely by a lung ailment, probably pneumonia, although he
suffered from ill health his entire life. His most important student
was Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, probably for whom Monn created a
treatise titled 'Theorie des Generalbasses in Beispielen ohne
Erklärung', which remained unpublished. As a composer, his works include
16 symphonies, eight concertos (six for keyboard, one for violin, one
for cello, plus another arrangement of a harpsichord concerto for cello
or contrabass), partitas, three fanfares, and three preludes and fugues
for organ. His style represents the infusion of the homophonic texture,
contrasting themes of the early sonata principle, and fundamental
modulatory patterns that reflect the predominant style of the late 18th
century. He was also one of the first to create the fourmovement
symphony by adding a minuet in one of his works. His brother Johann
Christoph Monn (1726-1782) was also a composer and teacher.
German composer and violinist. He came from a family of musicians. From
1696 he was active in Berlin, where he was student of Johann Theile.
Also there, he was second violinist in the court chapel at Berlin by
1710. He visited London in 1721 and remained at least until winter
1724-25. After 1725 he became the first violinist in the opera orchestra
at Hamburg under the direction of Reinhard Keiser. During the season
1725-1726, he participated in performances of operas by George Frideric
Handel under the direction of Georg Philipp Telemann. In August 1728, he
became the ducal Kapellmeister in Mecklenburg-Strelitz. There, he led
the orchestra, which comprised at least 14 musicians, and was also
responsible for developing a music library. In 1742, Johann Christian
Hertel assumed direction of the orchestra, and Linike became the court
keyboardist. In 1752, the orchestra was disbanded, and it was not until
1761 that he received a pension. As a composer, he wrote the cantata
'Quando sperasti', four concertos and several chamber pieces. His works
show relatively conservative Baroque traits in the prevalence of
imitative entries at the beginning of movements, a pervasive two-part
texture, and a tendency towards consistent motivic extension within
individual movements. His brother Christian Bernhard Linike (1673-1751)
was a cellist and composer, active in Berlin and Cöthen.
German composer, keyboard player and music theorist. His intelligence
and musical talent were evident early on, so he was sent to study in
Dresden in 1670. By 1671, he was a chorister at the Kreuzkirche, where
he attracted the attention of the Kapellmeister Vincenzo Albrici.
Another member of the Kreuzkirche staff, Erhard Titius, who had become
cantor at Zittau, invited Kuhnau to continue his education at the
prestigious Johanneum school there. After Titius died in 1682, Kuhnau
filled in as cantor. He then moved to Leipzig, matriculated in law at
the university, and after an unsuccessful application in 1682, won the
post of organist at Thomaskirche in 1684. He published his law thesis in
1688 and began to practice. In 1689, he married and eventually had
eight children. Before the turn of the century, he published all his
keyboard music, built up his renown as an organist, and engaged in
literary and linguistic scholarship. When the Thomaskantor Johann
Schelle died on 10 March 1701, the authorities quickly elected Kuhnau as
his successor, and he took up his new and prestigious post in April
1701. His career as cantor was not without difficulties. The growing
Leipzig opera drew promising young singers away from enrolling at
Thomasschule. Then, in 1701, Georg Philipp Telemann arrived in Leipzig
to study law and immediately founded his Collegium Musicum, which also
attracted some of Kuhnau’s students, and Telemann even inveigled the
mayor, going over Kuhnau’s head, to allow himself to compose for
Thomaskirche. Frequent illness troubled Kuhnau during this period, and
in 1703, he learned that the city council had inquired of Telemann
whether he might wish to succeed Kuhnau should he die. In the end, such
intrigues counted as mere annoyances, and Kuhnau’s career at
Thomaskirche was generally characterized by the esteem of Germany’s best
musicians. Johann Kuhnau was a major figure in German music at the turn
of the 18th century, and the immediate predecessor of Johann Sebastian
Bach as cantor of Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Although Kuhnau composed at
least 62 church cantatas, 14 Latin motets, a Magnificat, a passion
according to St. Mark, and 2 masses, this considerable body of sacred
music remained unpublished, and his single opera and a few other early
stage pieces are lost, so he influenced his contemporaries principally
through his published keyboard music: 14 suites, 2 preludes, 2 fugues, a
toccata, and 14 sonatas, including the famous Biblical Sonatas for
harpsichord (1700, Leipzig). Unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, he exhibited
all the various talents and interests that the Leipzig city council
evidently desired in the Thomaskantor: Kuhnau was not only an esteemed
composer and organist but also had built a distinguished law career,
translated scholarly works from French and Italian into German, learned
mathematics, Greek, and Hebrew, and had written a satirical novel, 'Der
musicalische Quack-Salber'. These self-motivated studies allowed him to
carry out the multifarious teaching, administrative, and musical duties
of his post with distinction. Much information about Kuhnau’s life comes
from his autobiography published in Johann Mattheson’s collection,
'Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte' (1740).
Italian teacher and composer. Following studies at the Conservatorio di
Santa Maria di Loreto under Pasquale Anfossi and Antonio Sacchini, he
was appointed as a violin teacher at Torre Annuziata in 1772. In 1781
his opera 'Montezuma' achieved success, allowing him to receive
commissions throughout Italy, where he became one of the leading
composers of opera. He attempted to achieve the same success in Paris in
1790, writing some works in collaboration with his pupil Isabelle de
Charrière, though these all failed and the Revolution forced his return
to Italy. In 1793 he was appointed maestro di cappella at the Cathedral
of Milan and in 1795 he assumed the same post at Santa Casa in Loreto,
Rome. By 1804 he was maestro di cappella at St. Peter’s in Rome, but a
conflict with the French occupiers landed him in prison. He was released
only at the special intervention of Napoleon. After Giovanni
Paisiello’s death in 1816 he was also appointed musical director of
Naples Cathedral. Zingarelli was an incredibly prolific composer
throughout his entire life, writing in virtually all genres. His works
include dozens of masses, eight oratorios, 57 operas, many Mass
movements and insertion arias, 15 Requiems, 55 Magnificats, 23 Te Deums,
541 Psalm settings, 21 Stabat maters, and 50 motets, as well as
numerous litanies, responsories, and sacred cantatas. He also wrote 20
secular cantatas, three large odes or hymns, 79 symphonies (mostly
singlemovement sinfonia da chiesa), eight string quartets, three duos,
eight sonatas, 11 pastorals, and 60 other works for organ. He was
considered the last great composer of opera seria, and he spent much of
his later years composing sacred music when his operas were overshadowed
by other Italians such as Giaocchino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini. His
music conforms to the late Italian style of the Classical period and,
thus, may have seemed anachronistic. He was renowned as a teacher,
numbering Bellini, Mercadante, Carlo Conti, Lauro Rossi, Morlacchi, and
Michael Costa among his students.
Italian composer and theorist. After being orphaned as a child, he spent
his early years as an apprentice silk merchant before going to Naples,
where he studied under Giovanni Paisiello and Gaetano Latilla. In 1787
he became a court musician at the Tuileries in Paris, and was active as
accompanist to the queen, voice teacher to the nobility, and maestro al
cembalo at the Theatre de Monsieur. After the French Revolution, he
settled in London in 1792 and pursued his career as a composer and voice
teacher; among his students was the Prince of Wales. His 'Complainte de
la reine de France' the following year is one of the most important
pieces of antirevolutionary music written. In England he was a
successful composer, theorist, and singing teacher with close ties to
George IV. His music, little studied, includes seven operas, two piano
concertos, 20 violin sonatas, six Italian ariettas, as well as a number
of works for harp, violin, and keyboard. He also published several
books, among them, 'Breve tratto di canto italiano' (London, 1818),
'Studio di musica teorica pratica' (London, 1830), and 'Anedotti
piacevoli e interessanti occorsi nella vita Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari da
Rovereto' (London, 1830). His son Adolfo Angelico Gotifredo Ferrari
(1807-1870), a pupil of Domenico Crivelli, taught singing at the Royal
Academy. Adolfo’s wife, Johanna Thomson, and his daughter Sophia Ferrari
were also singers.
