Giuseppe Maria Cambini (1746-1825)
- Simphonie Concertante [C] à plusieurs instruments
Performers: Robert Cole (1927-1964, bassoon); Laila Storch (1921-2022, oboè);
Orchestra Accademia dell'Orso; Newell Jenkins (1915-1996, conductor)
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Italian composer and violinist. His birthdate was supplied by Fétis, who
mistakenly gave Cambini's forenames as Giovanni Giuseppe (Jean-Joseph).
Fétis also stated that he studied with Polli, who is otherwise unknown.
Cambini's own account of his playing quartets as a young man with
Manfredi, Nardini and Boccherini contains errors that raise questions
about its validity, but it is likely that he worked with Manfredi. The
tradition of his study with Padre Martini is doubtful, as is that of his
personal contact with Haydn. Cambini may have been active in Naples in
the mid-1760s. Fétis related the story, based on an ironic anecdote in
Grimm's Correspondance littéraire, that Cambini, having produced an
unsuccessful opera in Naples in 1766, started home with his fiancée and
was captured by Barbary pirates. After lurid hardships on the voyage,
his freedom was finally bought by a wealthy Venetian. But the
authenticity of this romantic adventure is also open to serious doubt.
The first certain fact of Cambini's career is his arrival in Paris in
the early 1770s. He performed one of his symphonies concertantes at the
Concert Spirituel on 20 May 1773, and the following December his op.1, a
set of string quartets, was issued by Vernier. Thereafter his works
appeared with remarkable rapidity, and by 1800 close to 600 instrumental
works had been published under his name. He was hardly less active in
other areas. He composed, or contributed significantly to, at least 14
operas, of which a dozen were produced in Paris. The number of his vocal
works, some performed at the Concert Spirituel, was substantial, and he
evidently had some connnection with Gossec's Concerts des Amateurs.
From about 1788 he led the orchestra and performed other influential
duties at the Théâtre des Beaujolais; after the theatre closed in 1794
he held a similar post at the Théâtre Louvois. Unlike many foreign
musicians in Paris, Cambini seems to have adapted well to the
Revolution.
He wrote a number of popular revolutionary hymns and odes, and twice he
was awarded 2000 livres by the Committee of Public Instruction.
Cambini's works appeared less frequently after 1795, at which time his
interest turned to writing about music. In about 1795 his Nouvelle
méthode théorique et pratique pour le violon was published by Gaveaux,
and in 1799 Naderman et Lobry issued his Méthode pour la flûte
traversière. In 1804 he wrote an article about string quartet
performance for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (perhaps a few
others also), and he collaborated with Alexis de Garaudé briefly as the
anonymous editor of Tablettes de Polymnie. His career was evidently in
decline, however, and almost nothing is known of him after 1810. Fétis's
report that he died in the Hôpital Bicêtre in 1825 has been widely
accepted. Trimpert's research has indicated that Cambini did not die in
Paris, however, and Michaud's account that he retired to Holland and
died before 1818 must be considered possible. Cambini's name is best
known today through a brief encounter with Mozart, who blamed him, with
only circumstantial evidence, for Legros' cancellation of the
performance of his Symphonie concertante (the lost k297b) at the Concert
Spirituel. The envy and intrigue that Mozart suspected is not reported
elsewhere, and Gluck knew Cambini's personal reputation well enough to
recommend him as an honest man. During the time that he was active in
Paris, the most popular type of orchestral music was the symphonie
concertante, and Cambini's orchestral output reflects this preference.
While he composed only nine symphonies and 17 concertos, he wrote 82
symphonies concertantes, far more than any of his French contemporaries.
Most of these were published during his lifetime by several Parisian
firms. Cambini's symphonies concertantes, like those of his Parisian
contemporaries, are typically structured in two fast movements. The
melodic material is pleasant and appealing and the harmonic vocabulary
simple and predictable.
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