diumenge, 14 de novembre del 2021

PLEYEL, Ignaz (1757-1831) - Missa Solemnis (in D) à 4 voci (c.1790)

Francisco Hernández Tomé (fl. 1856-1872) - Interior de la Iglesia de las Calatravas, en Madrid


Ignaz Josef Pleyel (1757-1831) - Missa Solemnis (in D) à 4 voci (c.1790), Ben.756
Performers: Cornelia Hübsch (soprano); Daniela Treffner (mezzosoprano); Dónat Havár (tenor); Steven Scheshareg (bass); Capella Cantorum Savariense; Camerata Musica; Martin Brauss (conductor) 

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Composer, music publisher and piano maker. He founded a major publishing house and a piano factory and his compositions achieved widespread popularity in Europe and North America. Pleyel’s baptismal certificate in the parish office names his father Martin, a schoolteacher, and his mother Anna Theresia. He is said to have studied with Vanhal while very young, and in about 1772 he became Haydn’s pupil and lodger in Eisenstadt, his annual pension being paid by Count Ladislaus Erdődy, whose family at Pressburg was related to Haydn’s patrons, the Esterházys. The count showed his pleasure at the progress of his protégé by offering Haydn a carriage and two horses, for which Prince Esterházy agreed to provide a coachman and fodder. Little is known of the daily activities of Haydn’s several pupils. A few incidents concerning Pleyel’s apprenticeship are recounted in Framery’s Notice sur Joseph Haydn, in which the author claimed that ‘these various anecdotes were furnished me by a person who spent his entire youth with him and who guarantees their authenticity’. That person is generally identified as Pleyel, living in Paris when the Notice appeared there in 1810. The assumption is strengthened by the manner in which the narrative favours Pleyel, always emphasizing the closeness of his relationship with Haydn and the master’s affection and esteem for him. During this period Pleyel’s puppet opera Die Fee Urgele was first performed at Eszterháza (November 1776), and at the Vienna Nationaltheater. Haydn’s puppet opera Das abgebrannte Haus, or Die Feuersbrunst, was also first performed in 1776 or 1777, with an overture (or at least its first two movements) now generally accepted as being by Pleyel. 

By around 1780 he traveled to Italy where an amateur composer and diplomat, Norbert Hardrava, became his patron in Naples. By 1784 he arrived in Strasbourg, where he was appointed as assistant to Franz Xaver Richter, eventually becoming Richter’s successor in 1789. When the religious centers were abolished during the Revolution, he was able to travel to London to participate in the Professional Concerts in 1791, but he soon returned to France, settling in Paris in 1795. At that time he opened a publishing house, which soon came to dominate music publishing in France. Among the innovations Pleyel introduced were miniature scores (1802). Further travels back to Austria resulted in a pan-European reach, and he expanded his activities to the development and construction of keyboard instruments. He retired in 1820 to a farm outside of Paris. As a composer, Pleyel was conscious of the need to balance pleasing music with progressive development. He had an innate sense of melody, often coupled with progressive harmonies and expanded formal structures. He did not, however, fulfill the oft-quoted reflection of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that he might become Haydn’s successor in the world of music. His works include two operas, two Masses, a Requiem, four Revolutionary hymns, 32 Scottish songs, 40 symphonies, nine concertos (several with interchangeable alternative solo instruments), six sinfonia concertantes, nine serenades/divertimentos/notturnos, 95 quartets, 17 quintets, 70 trios, 85 duos, and around 65 works for fortepiano, as well as numerous smaller compositions. His music is known by Ben [Benton] numbers.

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