Giovanni Battista Casali (c.1715-1792)
- Confitebor tibi Domine
Performers: Vocal Ensemble Herz Jesu, Münster
Further info: Giovanni Battista Casali (c.1715-1792)
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Italian composer. In 1740 he was admitted to the Bologna Accademia
Filarmonica. He was assistant to Girolamo Chiti, maestro di cappella at S
Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, and in 1745 was designated his successor,
taking up the post in 1759. Between 1752 and 1791 he was a member of
the Congregazione di S Cecilia, serving as one of the examiners and
several times holding the office of guardiano della sezione dei maestri
compositori. From 1754 until his death he was also maestro di cappella
at S Maria in Vallicella and was active in several other churches in
Rome. He exchanged letters (now in I-Bc) with Padre Martini in Bologna.
Casali wrote much in the strict contrapuntal style of the Roman school,
but also used the modern concertante style with virtuoso coloratura
lines and homophonic writing, and often with instrumental accompaniment.
Burney, who heard his oratorio Abigail (1770) in Rome, called the music
‘common-place, for though it could boast of no new melody or
modulation, it had nothing vulgar in it’. This remark is perhaps the
source of Fétis’s judgment that Casali ‘had little invention, but his
style was very pure’. Grétry, who was Casali’s pupil for two years,
praised his counterpoint instruction and called him one of the most
famous maestri di cappella in Rome. Casali’s compositions, which are
mainly sacred, are in church archives in large numbers, above all at S
Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. His Roman oratorios followed the style of
the mid-18th-century opera seria, which preserved the da capo aria.
During his long term of office he became one of the best-known Italian
composers of sacred music of his time.
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