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
Performers: Thomas Schmitt (guitar)
Painting: Domingo de Aguirre (1741-1805) - La Villa y Corte de Madrid vista desde el camino de Alcalá (1780)
Further info: Federico Moretti (1769-1839) - Songs & Guitar works
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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.
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