Christian Joseph Lidarti (1730-1795)
- Overture 'Ester' (1774)
Performers: Orchestre National de Montpellier; Friedemann Layer (1941-2019, conductor)
Drawing: James Gillray (1757-1815) - Dilettanti-Theatricals; of a Peep at the Green Room, February 18, 1803
---
Austrian composer of Italian descent. He studied at a Cistercian
monastery in Klagenfurt and afterwards at the Jesuit seminary in Leoben.
While enrolled in philosophy and law courses at the University of
Vienna, he studied the harpsichord and harp and began to teach himself
composition. In Vienna the Kapellmeister Giuseppe Bonno, his uncle,
reproached him for his dilettantism and directed him to study the
classic theorists. In 1751 he went to Italy to complete his musical
education. After short stays in Venice and Florence, he spent five years
in Cortona as a music teacher and composer and studied with Jommelli in
Rome in 1757. From then until at least 1784 he was a player in the
chapel of the Cavalieri di S Stefano in Pisa. In 1761 he became a member
of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna and later in Modena. His last
dated composition is from 1793. Lidarti's regular association and
correspondence with his colleagues such as Martini, Jommelli and Burney
indicates that they held him in high esteem. Five letters to Martini
spanning the years 1762-84 are in the Bologna Conservatory library.
Lidarti's instrumental works (of which there are nearly 200) are
bipartite in structure and show a preference for forms such as the
minuet, even in sonata finales. They are lightly ornamented and often
approach near-equality in voicing. Van der Straeten depicts Lidarti as a
cellist, a fact omitted from his autobiography but borne out by the
unusual technical demands placed on the cello in much of his chamber
music, especially the quartets, in which the cello is more prominent
than in the majority of quartets of that time. His compositions maintain
a serene songlike quality, interrupted only by occasional fugal or
canonic passages.
Cap comentari:
Publica un comentari a l'entrada