Pietro Torri (c.1650-1737)
- Introduzione a Balli
Performers: Münchener Kammerorchester
Further info: Pietro Torri (c.1650-1737) - Missa pro Defunctis
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Italian composer and organist. He is first mentioned as organist and
maestro di cappella at the court of the Margrave of Bayreuth in 1684
(though Junker contended that he joined the court as organist in 1667
and succeeded J.P. Krieger as Kapellmeister in 1672). He left the court
in 1684 and may have spent the next five years travelling in Italy. In
1689 he joined the court of Max Emanuel II, Elector of Bavaria, in
Munich as organist, and the next year his first stage work, Gli oracoli
di Pallade e di Nemesi, was performed to celebrate a visit by Emperor
Leopold I. Thereafter he regularly prepared operas and serenatas for the
court theatre. When Max Emanuel became governor of the Spanish
Netherlands in 1692 he brought members of his chapel with him to
Brussels and named Torri maître de chapelle. In 1696 Torri was guest
Kapellmeister at the court of Hanover, and the opera Briseide, given in
Carnival that year, may be his composition. Agostino Steffani probably
extended Torri this invitation, and he may also have recommended Torri
to the Munich court in 1689. This tends to support the statement in some
contemporary sources that Torri was one of his pupils; the existence of
Torri's chamber duets further strengthens this claim, but there is no
secure evidence. With the death of Electoral Prince Joseph Ferdinand in
1689 the Bavarian claims to the Spanish throne lapsed and Max Emanuel
returned to Munich. Seeing no chance of replacing the Kapellmeister and
director of chamber music G.A. Bernabei, who had remained in the
Bavarian capital, Torri asked Steffani to arrange a position for him at
the court of Prussia.
Torri seems to have returned to Munich, however, and in 1701 he was
named director of chamber music with a salary of 1300 gulden. Max
Emanuel had joined the side of France in the War of the Spanish
Succession and, with the defeat of his forces by the English at
Höchstädt in 1704, he was forced to return to Brussels in exile together
with a portion of his chapel, including Torri and E.F. dall'Abaco. No
operas were produced in Brussels because of the war, although some of
Torri's sacred works and the oratorio La vanità del mondo date from this
time. The English seized Brussels in 1706, and Max Emanuel again fled,
spending the next nine years in the French-held regions of Saarbrücken,
Mons and Namur, taking Torri and most of his chapel with him. P.A.
Fiocco, who had been named lieutenant de la musique de la cour in 1696,
was named maître de chapelle of the Brussels court in that year and
served in that capacity until his death in 1714. Finally in 1715 Max
Emanuel returned to Munich with his court, and Torri, with the title of
Hofkapell-Director and a salary of 2000 gulden, entered his most
creative period, producing nearly an opera a year until his death.
Although the scale of his duties was somewhat reduced after 1726 by Max
Emanuel’s successor, Karl Albrecht, Torri's salary was increased to 2500
gulden on the death of Bernabei in 1732, and he was finally named
Hofkapellmeister.
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