Un portal on escoltar i gaudir de l'art musical dels segles XVI, XVII, XVIII i XIX. Compartir la bellesa de la música és l'objectiu d'aquest espai i fer-ho donant a conèixer obres de compositors molt o poc coneguts és el mètode.
Italian composer and conductor, son of Andrea Basili (1705-1777). He
initially studied music with his father, then with Giovanni Battista
Borghi and finally with Giuseppe Jannaconi at the Accademia di Santa
Cecilia in Rome. After successfully passing his examinations in 1783 he
was accepted as a member of the academy, and for the next 30 years
worked as maestro di cappella at Foligno (1786-1789), Macerata
(1789-1803) and Loreto (1809-1827); during this time his 13 operas, of
which Gl'Illinesi (Milan, 1819) was the most successful, were composed
and produced. He turned down the nomination for maestro di cappella at
Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome to become censor of the Milan Conservatory
in 1827, where he was responsible for Verdi's failure to be admitted to
the conservatory (1832). After the death of Valentino Fioravanti in
1737, he succeded him as maestro di cappella of St Pietro in Rome, a
post he held until his death. As a composer, he mainly wrote operas and
sacred music but he also composed symphonies, concertos and many chamber
music. Although now forgotten, he was well known in his day,
particularly for his church music. His son Basilio Basili (1803-c.1895)
was also a composer, active in Spain and mainly known by his Zarzuelas.
German flautist, composer, writer on music and flute maker. The son of a
blacksmith, he began his musical training in 1708 with his uncle,
Justus Quantz, a town musician in Merseburg. After Justus’s death three
months later, Quantz continued his apprenticeship with his uncle’s
successor and son-in-law, J.A. Fleischhack, whom he served as a
journeyman after the completion of the apprenticeship in 1713. During
his apprenticeship, Quantz achieved proficiency on most of the principal
string instruments, the oboe and the trumpet. Taking advantage of a
period of mourning for the reigning duke’s brother in 1714, he visited
Pirna where he came across some of Vivaldi’s violin concertos, which
were to have a decisive influence on his artistic development. In March
1716 he accepted an invitation by Gottfried Heyne to join the Dresden
town band. Quantz spent part of 1717 in Vienna studying counterpoint
with J.D. Zelenka. In 1718 he became oboist in the Polish chapel of
Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, accompanying him on
official visits to Warsaw but remaining in Dresden for substantial
periods. Because Quantz found little opportunity for advancement as an
oboist, he turned to the transverse flute in 1719, studying briefly with
P.G. Buffardin. However, he credited J.G. Pisendel, the leading
violinist and representative of the ‘mixed taste’ (French and Italian),
with the greatest influence on his development as a performer and
composer. His interest in composition, particularly in works for the
flute, continued to grow, stimulated by a wide range of Italian and
French works then performed in Dresden. In the Saxon court’s repertory,
however, influenced by opera seria and the instrumental compositions of
Corelli, Torelli and Vivaldi, the Italian musical style gradually
superseded the French.
Between 1724 and 1727 Quantz completed his training with a period of
study in Italy and shorter stays in France and England. He studied
counterpoint with Francesco Gasparini in Rome, impressed Alessandro
Scarlatti favourably and met, among many others, the future Dresden
Kapellmeister J.A. Hasse, who was then studying with Scarlatti. From
August 1726 to March 1727 he visited Paris. While in Paris he for the
first time had a second key added to his flutes to improve their
intonation. After a ten-week stay in England, where he met Handel,
Quantz returned to Dresden in July 1727. The three-year tour established
his reputation outside Germany, paving the way for the future
international dissemination of his music. In March 1728 he was promoted
to a member of the regular Dresden court chapel, where he was no longer
required to double on the oboe. With this promotion he had finally won
recognition as one of the outstanding performers in Dresden. In May 1728
Quantz, Pisendel, Buffardin and others accompanied Augustus II on a
state visit to Berlin. Quantz made a particularly deep impression on
Prince Frederick, and returned to the Prussian court twice a year to
teach him the flute. When Augustus II died in 1733, Quantz was not
allowed to transfer to Berlin. When Frederick became King of Prussia in
1740 he could offer Quantz 2000 thalers a year, exemption from duties in
the opera orchestra and an agreement to take orders only from him. In
December 1741 Quantz moved to Berlin, and for the remainder of his
career his duties centred on the supervision of the king’s private
evening concerts, for which he wrote new works and at which he alone had
the privilege of criticizing Frederick’s playing. Quantz remained at
Frederick's court at Potsdam until his death in 1773.
German pianist, conductor and composer. Son of Franz Wüllner (1798-1842)
and Josephina Winkelmann, he studied with Anton Felix Schindler and
Carl Arnold in Munster and Frankfurt am Main (1846-50). From 1850 to
1854 he was active as a concert artist. He was a teacher at the Munich
music school (1856-58), then music director in Aachen (1858-64). In 1864
he returned to Munich, where he became court music director of the
church choir. He then taught at the music school (from 1867), and also
conducted at the Court Opera. Under unfavorable conditions (against
Wagner's wishes), he prepared and conducted the first performance of Das
Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870), the success of which led to
his appointment as principal conductor there in 1871. In 1877 he became
court conductor at Dresden, and also director of the Conservatory. In
1882 Ernst von Schuch was promoted to take his place; thereafter Wullner
was one of the conductors of the Berlin Philharmonic for the 1882-1885
seasons. In 1884 he became conductor of the Gurzenich Concerts in
Cologne and director of the Cologne Conservatory, later becoming also
municipal music director, posts he held until his death. He was awarded
an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich in 1877 and he was
highly regarded as a choral composer. Although he was chiefly remembered
as a conductor, his musical achievements are many-faceted. His
compositions, most of them unpublished, show that he was a prominent
representative of the Mendelssohn tradition and Berlin academicism. His
son Ludwig Wüllner (1858-1938) was a baritone and actor.
Portuguese singer and composer. He became a member of the St. Cecilia
Brotherhood on 19 February 1761 and a signatory to a reform of its
statutes in 1765 (Vieira 1900, pp. 324-325; Ribeiro 1995, p. 17). In
1763, Policarpo da Silva was admitted as a singer of the Patriarcal,
while in 1771 he auditioned to become a member of the Capela Real da
Ajuda at a salary of 30000 réis per month (Fernandes 2009, p. 242). In
addition, he was a royal chamber musician and music teacher. A printed
collection of his Italian canzonette on texts by Metastasio, entitled La
Primavera (1787), describes him as ‘Professore di Musica All'Attuale
Servizio delia Cappella e Camera Reale di Sua Maestá Fedelissima’.
Similarly, on the title-page of a cantata dedicated to D. Carlota
Joaquina, composed on the occasion of her birthday in 1799 (P-La,
48-III-35), he calls himself ‘Musico di Cappella e coi Camara di S. M.
F. [Sua Majestade Fidelíssima]’. While not formerly employed as a
teacher at the Seminário da Patriarcal, he had many private students
(Fernandes 2009, p. 397) and performed in private chamber concerts,
including several times for William Beckford, who regarded him as a
‘famous tenor’ in 1787. A set of Solfejos for soprano (P-Ln, C.I.C. 7)
is a testament to his work as a teacher. The title-page of a Marcha e
Contredança (P-Ln, M.M. 6003) for piano with accompaniment for two
violins and flute implies he was the music master of D. José João Miguel
de Bragança e Ligne, 1st Duke of Miranda do Corvo, in 1800.
German writer and composer. His fantastic tales epitomize the Romantic
fascination with the supernatural and the expressively distorted or
exaggerated. As a critic, he placed his sharp mind at the service of a
consistent (if partial) view of Romanticism and wrote vivid and forceful
reviews of the music of his time. His work as a composer, which he
himself regarded highly, has been neglected but shows a certain verve
and originality. He was also a gifted artist, the author of some
excellent sketches and caricatures. His personality and talents lent a
distinctive, if somewhat lurid, hue to Romanticism and influenced
several generations of artists, writers and composers. He was a student
of law, and served as assessor at Poznan; also studied music with the
organist Christian Podbielski (1741-1792). He acquired considerable
proficiency in music; served as music director at the theater in
Bamberg; then conducted opera performances in Leipzig and Dresden
(1813-14). In 1814 he settled in Berlin, where he remained. He used the
pen-name of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler (subsequently made famous in
Schumann's Kreisleriana) ; his series of articles in the 'Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung' under that name were reprinted as Phantasiestiicke
in Callot's Manier (1814). As a writer of fantastic tales, he made a
profound impression on his period, and influenced the entire Romantic
school of literature; indirectly, he was also a formative factor in the
evolution of the German school of composition. As a composer he wrote a
number of operas, a ballet, 'Harlekin', some sacred works, a symphony, a
piano trio, 4 piano sonatas and other chamber works.
Federico Moretti y Cascone (1769-1839)
- Fantasía, Variazioni, e Coda per Chitarra sola Sul Tema del Rondó
della Cenerentola Non più mesta accanto al fuoco del Maestro Rossini ...
Op. 27
Spanish composer, theorist and performer widely acknowledged as a key
figure in the development of the modern notational system for guitar.
Son of Pietro Moretti (1722-1784) and Rosa Cascone (c.1732-1791), his
family belonged to the Florentine nobility and had a long tradition of
service to the Spanish Monarchy. He first studied with Domenico Cimarosa
and Fedele Finaroli and then with Girolamo Masi. In 1794, he moved to
Spain apparently under fear that Naples, then involved in the War of the
First Coalition, was to fall under French rule. When Naples signed
peace with France in 1796, he joined the Spanish army as a regular cadet
in the Reales Guardias Walonas while still pursuing his musical career.
In 1799, he published in Madrid his 'Principios para tocar la guitarra
de seis ordenes, precedidos de los elementos generales de la música',
dedicated to the queen María Luisa de Parma, wife of Carlos IV. In 1800
he was promoted and destined first to Campo de Gibraltar and then to the
Balearic islands where he participated in the re-seizure of Mahon
(Minorca) from the British. During this campaign it is believed that he
entered in contact with captain Estanislao Solano, a keen guitarist who
started to perform some of his composition in social gatherings attended
by Fernando Sor who was influenced by his work. In his return to Italy,
he was admitted, on 28 April 1805, in the prestigious Philharmonic
Academy of Bologna. Few months later he returned to Spain where he
continued progressing in the military career. In 1816, he moved to
Madrid where he was awarded the Royal Military Order of San
Hermenegildo.
A year later, with the support of the Real Sociedad Económica Matritense
which he had just joined and aided by the leading musical
chalcographer Bartolome Wirmbs, he established the first modern musical
publishing house in Spain. In 1820, he married Bárbara Sánchez Andrade
with whom he had been living in Madrid for four years; they had no
children. A year later, and amid the turmoil of the Liberal Trienium, he
published for beginners the 'Gramática Razonada Musical' (1821)
dedicated to the younger brother of the King, the infante Francisco de
Paula. He was awarded that year the Royal and Military Order of San
Fernando. Having avoided collaborating with the liberal regime, he had
little trouble in returning to royal favour after the Restoration. In
1824, he published the 'Sistema Uniclave o ensayo sobre uniformar las
claves de la música sujetándolas a una sola escala' (1824). In 1828, he
published a dictionary of military terms in Spanish and French on which
he had been working since 1810 and that he dedicated to King Fernando
VII who ordered its publication by the royal press. A year later he was
promoted to the rank of mariscal de campo. In 1831 he published a
translation into Spanish of Angelo Morigi’s 'Trattato di contrappunto
fugato (Tratado del contrapunto fugado) and around the same time the
'Cuadro general melódico comparativo de la extension de todos los
ynstrumetnos de viento y de cuerda y de las cuatro voces fundamentals'
(c.1831). Although suffering from a Parkinson-style syndrome, in the
years leading to his death, he published a number of popular songs. He
died in Madrid on 17 January 1839, the same year than his colleague and
admirer Fernando Sor.
Flemish organist, harpsichordist and composer. He was the eighth child
of Pietro Antonio Fiocco (1653-1714) and Jeanne Françoise Deudon.
Nothing is known of his early years. From c.1729 to 1731 he was sous-
maitre at the royal chapel. He resigned in August 1731 to accept the
post of sangmeester (choirmaster) at Antwerp Cathedral, succeeding
Willem De Fesch in a post he held until 1737. Then he returned to
Brussels to serve as sangmeester of the collegiate church of St Michel
and Ste Gudule following the death of Petrus Hercules Brehy. He held
this post until his premature death four years later. As a composer, he
was mainly active as a church composer writing masses, motets, psalms
and other sacred pieces. He also left a collection of 'Pieces de
clavecin' (2 suites of 12 pieces each) which demonstrate the strong
influence of French School. His brother Jean-Joseph Fiocco (1686-1746)
was also organist and composer.
English composer and violinist. His first publication appeared in 1720, a
solo cantata 'While in a Lovely Rurall Seat'. He was associated with
the Drury Lane Theater Orchestra in London. His association with Drury
Lane may have begun as early as 1723, when a masque, 'Apollo and
Daphne', by ‘Jones’ was performed there; it was adapted in 1725 as a
pantomime with songs by Henry Carey. According to John Hawkins, in 1730
he succeeded Stefano Carbonelli as the orchestra's leader there. He also
was a teacher; among his violin pupils was Michael Christian Festing.
He died in 1744, of which his position in Drury Lane was succeeded by
Richard Clarke. As a composer, almost nothing is extant and only the
cantata 'While in a lovely rural seat' and his instrumental music has
survived to our days. Among them, a large collection of 'Suits or Setts
of Lessons for keyboard' (1732).
English composer and organist. At the age of 2 he had an accident that
left him virtually blind, but nonetheless he studied organ with John
Reading, and when that was unsatisfactory, with Maurice Greene. By 1726
he had been organist at All Hallows and was appointed at the age of 14
in a similar position at St. Andrews in Holbourne. In 1729 he received a
bachelor’s degree in music from Oxford University, from where he
returned to London to become a member of the Society of the Inner Temple
in 1734. At the same time he performed as a violinist, arranging a
series of public concerts at the Swan Tavern, Cornhill, and Castle
Tavern on Paternoster Row. By 1742 he was employed at the royal court
and soon became a friend of George Frederick Handel. After Handel’s
death, in 1760 he continued to develop oratorio concerts in conjunction
with John Christopher Smith Jr. In 1770 he was elected to the board of
the Foundling Hospital, and in 1779 he succeeded William Boyce as master
of the King’s Musick. Stanley was well regarded, both for his majestic
performance and for his compositions. These include an opera,
Teremintas; a large-scale cantata, The Choice of Hercules; and four
oratorios (Jephthah, 1757; Arcadia, 1761; The Fall of Egypt, 1774; and
Zimri). He also composed odes for the English court birthdays and other
occasions; these have mostly been lost and their exact number is
unknown. In addition, he regularly published his music, beginning in
1740 with the eight solos for the flute. These works, as Op. 1-10,
include three sets of organ voluntaries (1748-1754), six organ
concertos, 15 cantatas, and six “concertos” for solo keyboard. His style
is similar to that of Thomas Arne or William Boyce.
French violinist and composer, also called l’aîné. Brother of the
violinist Pierre Leduc (1755-1826), he received lessons in Paris from
Pierre Gaviniès. In 1759 he was a second violin at the Concerts
spirituels and made his début as soloist in 1763. From then, he was one
of the first violins in the Concert Spirituel orchestra, and he
continued to appear as an orchestral player and soloist until his death.
In 1773 LeDuc, Pierre Gaviniés, and François-Joseph Gossec became
directors of the Concerts; LeDuc held the position until his death. He
was a close friend with Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-Georges
and taught his brother Pierre LeDuc. His music style is characterized by
a sense of drama in the abrupt contrasts between sections of each
movement. The writing is skilful and idiomatic, particularly for the
violin; the harmonies are inventive, expressive, and often unusually
chromatic. His output consists of three violin concertos, three sinfonia
concertantes, three symphonies, eight trios, 12 duos, seven sonatas,
five divertimentos, and a solo violin sonata.
Italian composer, organist, and teacher. The brother of Giuseppe
Sammartini, he was the son of a French oboist, Alexis Saint- Martin, who
gave him his first instruction in music. A set of vocal works published
in 1725 allowed him to obtain the post of maestro di cappella at the
church of Sant’Ambrogio, as well as other churches in the city of Milan,
where he remained his entire life. A prolific composer, he was much
sought after, particularly for his sacred music and instrumental pieces.
An early pioneer of the symphony, Sammartini began writing independent
pieces in the new genre as early as 1732 in three and four parts, with
their first documented appearance in his opera Memet composed for Lodi.
They take on increasingly complex structures over the next several
decades, with consistent binary forms that anticipate the sonata
principle. These works achieved international fame, with sources found
throughout Europe and even South America. Sammartini had a reputation as
one of the most influential teachers of the period; his most famous
student was Christoph Willibald von Gluck, who studied with him from
1737 to 1741. He was a prolific composer, writing four operas, 17 large
sacred works, eight large cantatas, over 200 string trios (some
indistinguishable from the Sinfonia à 3), 50 sonatas, at least 68
symphonies, 21 quartets (some with flute), and 10 concertos for cello,
flute, violin, and recorder. His works, known by their JC numbers, have
been cataloged by Newell Jenkins and Bathia Churgin.
Italian composer. His earliest education was as a chorister at the San
Sabino Church in Bari, but by 1725 he was enrolled as a student in the
Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio a Porta Capuana in Naples. In 1732 he made
his debut at the Teatro dei Fiorentini with a comic opera, Li mariti a
forza. He continued to compose popular works for this theatre until
1738, when he premiered another opera at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
Thereafter followed commissions from throughout Italy, but he preferred
to remain in Rome as the assistant maestro di cappella at the church of
Santa Maria maggiore. In 1741, however, a dispute caused him to begin an
itinerant life, eventually winding up in Venice in 1751, where he was
appointed chorusmaster at the Ospedale della Pietà. Although this led to
an appointment as assistant maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s in 1762,
he decided to abandon Venice and return to Naples in 1768. As a
prominent and wellrespected member of the Neapolitan school of opera
composition, he wrote in a style of colleagues such as Antonio Sacchini
and Niccolò Piccinni. His music includes 49 operas, several oratorios,
masses, motets, and instrumental music.
Austrian monastic composer and teacher. In 1760 he was sent to Innsbruck
for his education, studying at the St. Nikolaus school and functioning
as a chorister at the university church. By 1768 he was a student at the
University of Innsbruck in philosophy, and in 1770 his Singspiel Das
alte deutsche Wörtlein tut was premiered. He entered the Cistercian
abbey at Stams the same year, becoming ordained as a priest in 1774. He
functioned as a teacher of violin at the abbey school, later being
appointed as regens chori in 1791. Although his music adheres to the
older stile antico, his instrumental works show awareness of the forms
and structures found in the mainstream cities of Austria. His
Singspiels, most in dialect, were particularly popular in the Tyrol; he
composed 11 of these. He also composed several small occasional
cantatas; six Masses; over 100 sacred works such as hymns, Psalms,
motets, sacred Lieder, and antiphons; an oratorio; 10 divertimentos
(partitas, cassations); a large serenade; a string quartet; a symphony;
and a series of sogetti in 1790 as exercises for the voice. He was,
undoubtedly, one of the most notable musical personalities of
18th-Century Tyrol.
German composer. He was the son of Gottfried Keiser (? - before 1732),
an organist and composer, and Agnesa Dorothea von Etzdorff (1657-1732),
who had married only four months before his birth. The elder Keiser
seems to have lost or given up his position as organist at Teuchern in
1674 or 1675 and departed, leaving his wife and two sons behind. On 13
July 1685 Keiser enrolled at the Thomasschule, Leipzig, for seven years,
and it was there presumably that he received his principal musical
education, studying under Johann Schelle and perhaps Johann Kuhnau.
Mattheson observed, however, that he owed his composing skill almost
entirely to natural ability and the study of the best Italian music.
After leaving the Thomasschule, Keiser probably soon made his way to
Brunswick, where the court opera was flourishing under the leadership of
Johann Kusser; by 1694 he had obtained an appointment as
‘Cammer-Componist’. His opera Procris und Cephalus, on a text by the
court poet F.C. Bressand, was performed in Brunswick that year, while
another opera, Basilius, was done in Hamburg. Between 1695 and 1698
Keiser produced five more operas for the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel court,
all with Bressand, but in 1696 or 1697 he moved to Hamburg as Kusser’s
successor at the Opera. There he found one of his most sympathetic
literary collaborators in C.H. Postel, with whom he wrote eight operas,
including Adonis (1697), Janus (1698) and the lost Iphigenia (1699).
Beginning in 1703 Keiser also tried his hand at managing the opera
house, in partnership with a literary man named Drüsicke. According to
Mattheson their administration got off to a good start but was soon
beset by financial difficulties, at least partly precipitated by riotous
living by Keiser and his friends. In spring 1704 the theatre was
temporarily closed, and Keiser left briefly for Weissenfels, where he
gave the first performance of his Almira, originally intended for
Hamburg.
Drüsicke apparently passed on the Almira libretto to the youthful
Handel, a member of the opera orchestra, who scored a great success with
his own setting in January 1705, leading to strained relations between
the two composers that no doubt contributed to Handel’s decision shortly
afterwards to leave for Italy. Octavia (1705), Keiser’s first opera
after returning from Weissenfels, inaugurated an important series of
eight historical dramas with librettos by Barthold Feind. Following the
final collapse of his administration in 1707, Keiser appears to have
absented himself from the opera house for more than a year, passing much
of his time visiting the estates of noble friends. He may not have
participated in the highly successful première of Der Carneval von
Venedig in summer 1707, and he composed no new work for 1708. Whatever
rift may have existed between him and the new director, J.H. Sauerbrey,
seems to have been healed by 1709, and his dominance over the Hamburg
repertory became more complete than ever. In 1721 he may have conducted a
performance of Tomyris in Durlach before returning to Hamburg, where
his arrival was celebrated on 9 August with a performance of his
oratorio Der siegende David. In 1725 and 1726, while Telemann composed
relatively little for that theatre, Keiser turned out five major new
works, two revised versions, and parts of two intermezzos. On 2 December
1728 Keiser succeeded Mattheson as Kantor of Hamburg Cathedral, an
important post which nonetheless brought him meagre remuneration. He
never again composed a wholly new opera, though he did revise Croesus in
1730. His diminished productivity probably had less to do with the
demands of his ecclesiastical duties than with the increasingly sorry
state of the Hamburg Opera, which finally closed its doors in 1738.
After the death of his wife in 1735, he ‘found reason’ (in Mattheson’s
words) ‘to remain completely in retirement’ until his own death four
years later.
Spanish composer. In 1721 he was admitted as choirboy at the Cathedral
of Salamanca where he received music lessons from Antonio de Yanguas.
From 1724 he was under the supervision of Juan Francés de Iribarren,
organist there. It was precisely Martín Ramos who succeeded his teacher
Iribarren as first organist during which time he unsuccessfully applied
for the positions of chapel master at the cathedrals of Zamora and
Santiago de Compostela. In 1754, a few months after Master Yanguas
death, he won the official post of chapel master at the Cathedral of
Salamanca in a post he held the rest of his life. He also spent whole of
his life in Salamanca almost with no traveling anywhere and composing
at least 700 works, most of them sacred music.
Dutch composer and organist. He was born in Germany but now living in
Holland. When he was 3 years old he took drum lessons but very soon he
discovered his deep passion for organ and church music. Until the age of
14, he sang in the choir of Breda Cathedral where he performed with the
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Since 2016, he combines his organ lessons with his studies for Music
Education in Tilburg (Netherlands). He also studied at the Royal
Conservatoire in The Hague for music teaching according to the Kodaly
concept. As a composer, he wrote a few orchestral works as well as
chamber and organ pieces in a mix-up styles; baroque, classical and
modern. As a researcher, he is developing a project about recovering
neglected music by 18th Century Dutch composers.
German composer, organist, conductor and teacher. He learnt the piano
from his father, Johann Gottlob Schneider (1753-1840), and then at the
Zittau Gymnasium with Johann Schönfelder and Unger. In 1804 he published
his first works, a set of three piano sonatas, and in the following
year he entered the University of Leipzig to continue his musical
studies; here he came into contact with August Eberhard Müller, Johann
Gottfried Schicht and Johann Friedrich Rochlitz. In 1806 he became
singing teacher at the Ratsfreischule, in 1807 organist of the
Universitätskirche, in 1810 director of the Secondaschen Opera Company,
in 1812 organist of the Thomaskirche, in 1816 conductor of the
Singakademie, and in 1817 musical director of the city theatre. His
performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto in Leipzig on 28
November 1811 is believed to have been the work’s première. In 1820 he
became Hofkapellmeister at Anhalt-Dessau, where he contributed much to
improve musical life: he founded a Singakademie, a schoolmasters’ choral
society, a Liedertafel and a music school, which was successful for
about 15 years and had a number of excellent pupils, among them Robert
Franz and Robert Volkmann. Between 1820 and 1851 he directed more than
80 German music and singing festivals, most of which included a
performance of one of his oratorios. He belonged to numerous musical
societies and received honorary doctorates from the universities of
Halle and Leipzig in 1830. The highpoint of his wide-ranging
compositional activity while at Leipzig came with his oratorio Das
Weltgericht, first performed on 6 March 1820 at the Gewandhaus and
widely performed thereafter. As a composer, he wrote seven operas, four
masses, six oratorios, 25 cantatas, 23 symphonies, seven piano
concertos, sonatas for violin, flute, and cello, and a great many
shorter instrumental pieces, some of them for piano, some for organ. He
also left numerous solo songs and part songs. His brothers Johann
Schneider (1789-1864) and Gottlieb Schneider (1797-1856) were also
organists and composers. His son Theodor Schneider (1827-1909) was a
cellist and conductor.
German composer and violinist. He studied at the university of Halle and
Leipzig. He spent six months as director of music for Count Heinrich XI
von Reuss at Schleiz before entering the Weimar court orchestra as a
violinist in 1720. In 1726 he was made Konzertmeister, a post apparently
left vacant since J.S. Bach's departure in 1717. From 1734 he served as
Kapellmeister in Bayreuth, and also was music teacher to Margravine
Wilhelmine, sister of Friedrich II the Great. On 20 September 1752 he
married the widowed Dorothea Hagin, by whom he had two sons, Friederich
Pfeiffer (1754-1816), a lawyer by profession and an able violinist, and
Johann Heinrich Pfeiffer, who died in infancy. In 1752 or 1753 Pfeiffer
was awarded the honorary title of ‘Hofrat’ (privy councillor), and his
salary was increased; by the time of his death it stood at 1375
Reichsthaler. As a composer, he wrote 3 symphonies, 18 concertos for
Violin and Strings, 9 concertos for Violino Picolo and Orchestra, 2
concertos for Lute and Strings, a Flute Concerto, chamber music and
vocal pieces.
