HELLENDAAL, Pieter (1721-1799) - Concerto Grossi (in g) No.1, Op.3 (c.1758)

Pieter Hellendaal (1721-1799) - Concerto Grossi (in g) No.1, Op.3 (c.1758)

Performers: Ensemble Benedetto Marcello

Engraving: Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet (1749-1838) - A group of musical amateurs at Cambridge (c.1770)

Further info: Hollandse Meesters

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Pieter (Pietro, Petrus, Peter) Hellendaal

(Rotterdam, bap. 1 April 1721 - Cambridge, 19 April 1799)

Dutch violinist, composer and organist, active also in England. When he was nine the family moved to Utrecht, where he was appointed organist of the Nicolaikerk on 11 January 1732. In 1737 the family moved to Amsterdam. The music lover Mattheus Lestevenon, Secretary of Amsterdam, enabled Hellendaal to study with Tartini. Before November 1743 he returned from Italy and appeared as a violinist in certain Amsterdam inns. On 14 February 1744 he obtained a privilege for publishing his compositions, and his first two sets of violin sonatas were issued in Amsterdam. He married the daughter of an Amsterdam surgeon in June 1744. From 1749 to 1751 Hellendaal was at Leiden, where he enrolled at the university and did his utmost to obtain a foothold in academic music-loving circles. He made frequent public appearances there and at The Hague and Delft. Yet he found little opportunity for building up a livelihood in the Netherlands. On 9 October 1751 he gave his last concert in Leiden and left for London. In the ensuing years Hellendaal participated considerably in London's musical life. He appeared in concerts in Hickford's Room and other places, and his fellow performers could be reckoned among ‘the best Hands in Town’ (The General Advertiser, 28 February 1752); on 13 February 1754 he took part in Handel's Acis and Galatea, playing violin solos between the acts. While he was in London he published his Six Grand Concertos op.3, for which he was granted a Royal Privilege, dated 23 April 1758. At the end of 1759 he applied for the post of conductor of the Music Room orchestra at Oxford. He directed a concert there on 5 November and played a concerto of his own; but the other candidate, J.B. Malchair, was appointed. In August 1760 Hellendaal gave a concert in King's Lynn Town Hall. Soon afterwards, on 5 September 1760, he was appointed organist of St Margaret's there in succession to Charles Burney. 

In 1762 Hellendaal moved to Cambridge. Here he worked at first as a performer, later as a teacher of the violin and of theory (among his pupils was Charles Hague, who was appointed professor of music in 1799). According to the Cambridge Chronicle of 19 November 1762, Hellendaal was then appointed organist of Pembroke Hall Chapel. He took part in many concerts of particular interest in Cambridge and other places, especially in East Anglia. A Hellendaal took part in the Handel Commemoration in London in 1784 but it is not known whether it was father or son. In 1769 Hellendaal's Glory be to the Father was awarded the annual prize of the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Catch Club. About this time his six sonatas for violin and continuo, op.4, were published. In April 1777 he was appointed organist of Peterhouse Chapel, in succession to Dr Randall, professor of music at Cambridge. From this time, the amount of information about concerts given by Hellendaal sharply declines. He moved to Trumpington Street, opposite Peterhouse, and on 11 July 1778 invited subscriptions for ‘Twelve of his Solos for the Violin’. About 1780 his Eight Solos for the Violoncello with a Thorough Bass were published at his own expense and dedicated to the Cambridge flour merchant John Anderson. His last numbered collection, Three Grand Lessons op.6, was published in London, and dedicated to Miss Anderson. During the last decades of Hellendaal's life a number of vocal works, some with instrumental accompaniment, and a collection of metrical psalms, were published at the composer's house. Hellendaal's son Peter collaborated in the latter, and in 1790 he was also responsible for selecting and arranging various hymns and psalms from his father’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns for use in parish churches. Hellendaal died in 1799 and was buried at Cambridge at St Mary the Less, next to Peterhouse.