The composers at Cape Classic 2009
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni
(Italy, Venice 1671- 1751)
Albinoni studied violin and singing. Relatively little is known about his life.
Unlike most composers of his time, he appears never to have sought a post at either a church or court of nobility, but then he was a man of independent means and had the option to compose music independently. In 1722, Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, to whom Albinoni had dedicated a set of twelve concertos, invited him to direct two of his operas in Munich.
While famous in his days as an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, especially his oboe concertos.
The "Adagio in G minor" attributed to him is one of the most frequently recorded pieces of Baroque music. But this “Albinoni Adagio in G minor” is a 1958 composition by Remo Giazotto, allegedly based on fragments from a slow movement of a trio sonata he had been sent by the Dresden State Library. With the destruction of this library a part of Albinoni's work was lost in World War II
His instrumental music greatly attracted the attention of Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on Albinoni's themes and constantly used his basses for harmony exercises for his pupils.
Johann Sebastian Bach
(Germany, Eisenach 1685 – Leipzig 1750)
J.S. Bach was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style, which arose from his extraordinary fluency in contrapuntal invention and motivic control, his flair for improvisation at the keyboard, his exposure to South German, North German, Italian and French music, and his apparent devotion to the Lutheran liturgy. He found a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France. His access to musicians, scores and instruments as a child and a young man, combined with his emerging talent for writing tightly woven music of powerful sonority, appear to have set him on course to develop an eclectic, energetic musical style. Throughout his teens and 20s, his output showed increasing skill in the large-scale organisation of musical ideas, and the enhancement of the Buxtehudian model of improvisatory preludes and counterpoint of limited complexity. The period 1713–14 - when a large repertoire of Italian music became available to the Weimar court orchestra. From this time onwards, he appears to have absorbed into his style the Italians’ dramatic openings, clear melodic contours, the sharp outlines of their bass lines, greater motoric and rhythmic conciseness, more unified motivic treatment, and more clearly articulated schemes for modulation.He is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini
(Italy, Lucca 1743 – 1805)
Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was a classical era composer and cellist from Italy naturalized Sp anish, whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Much of his chamber music follows models established by Joseph Haydn; however, Boccherini is often credited with improving Haydn's model of the string quartet by bringing the cello to prominence, whereas Haydn had always relegated it to an accompaniment role. A virtuoso cellist of the first caliber Boccherini often played violin repertoire on the cello. He wrote a large amount of chamber music, including over one hundred string quintets for two violins, viola and two cellos, a dozen guitar quintets, not all of which have survived, nearly a hundred string quartets, and a number of string trios and sonatas. His orchestral music includes around 30 symphonies and 12 virtuoso cello concertos. Boccherini's style is characterized by the typical Rococo charm, lightness, and optimism, and exhibits much melodic and rhythmic invention, coupled with frequent influences from the guitar tradition of his adopted country, Spain. His distinctive compositions for string quintet (two violins, one viola, two cellos), long neglected after his death, have been brought back to life by the Boccherini Quintet in the second half of the XX century, when two of its founding members discovered a complete collection of the first edition of the 141 string quintets in Paris and began playing and recording them around the world.
Archangelo Corelli
(Italy, Fusignano 1653 - 1713)
Corelli’s first major success was gained in Paris at the age of nineteen, and to this he owed his European reputation. From Paris, Corelli went to Germany. In 1681 he was in the service of the electoral prince of Bavaria; between 1680 and 1685 he spent a considerable time in the house of his friend and fellow violinist-composer Cristiano Farinelli (believed to be the uncle of the celebrated castrato Farinelli).
In 1685 Corelli was in Rome, where he led the festival performances of music for Queen Christina of Sweden. He moved to Modena for a few years, but returned to Rome.
The style of execution introduced by Corelli and preserved by his pupils, such as Francesco Geminiani, Pietro Locatelli, and many others, was of vital importance for the development of violin playing. It has been said that the paths of all of the famous violinist-composers of 18th-century Italy lead to Arcangelo Corelli who was their "iconic point of reference."
However, Corelli used only a limited portion of his instrument's capabilities. Nevertheless, his compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music. Johann Sebastian Bach studied the works of Corelli and based an organ fugue (BWV 579) on Corelli's Opus 3 of 1689. His compositions are distinguished by a beautiful flow of melody and by a mannerly treatment of the accompanying parts, which he is justly said to have liberated from the strict rules of counterpoint.
His concerti grossi have often been popular in Western culture.
Corelli died in possession of a fortune of 120,000 marks and a valuable collection of pictures. He is buried in the Pantheon at Rome.
Johann Friedrich Fasch
(Germany, Buttelstedt 1688 – Zerbst, 1758)
Fasch was a choirboy in Weissenfels, singing as a soprano and studied under Johann Kuhnau at Thomasschule zu Leipzig from 1701 onwards.
His first compositions, which are very much related to Telemann date from this period. Later founded a Collegium Musicum in the city. He then traveled throughout Germany, becoming a violinist in the orchestra in Bayreuth in 1714, and also holding court posts in Greiz and Lukavec. In 1722 he was appointed Kapellmeister at Zerbst, a post he held until his death at the age of 70
His works include cantatas, concertos, symphonies and chamber music. None of his pieces were printed in his lifetime, and a large number of his vocal works, including four operas, have been lost. However, he was held in high regard by his contemporaries (Johann Sebastian Bach made manuscript copies of a number of his pieces), and he is today considered as one of the most important composers of the Bach era and as a link between the Baroque and Classical periods. Unfortunately many of his oevres are lost, e.g. his operas.
Girolamo Frescobaldi
(Italy, Ferrara 1583 - Rome 1643)
This Italian musician was one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods.
He studied under the organist and famous madrigalist Luzzasco Luzzaschi at Ferrara and is also considered to have been influenced by Carlo Gesualdo, who was in Ferrara at the time. His patron Guido Bentivoglio[1] helped him get the position as an organist at the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in the spring of 1607. Frescobaldi travelled with Bentivoglio to the Low Countries before Frescobaldi became organist of St Peter's in Rome in 1608, a post he held until his death. From 1628 to 1634 he was organist at the court of the Medicis in Florence.
The majority of Frescobaldi's extant output consists of keyboard music. His other extant instrumental output consists chiefly in the 1st Volume of Canzoni to be Played with any Type of Instrument, 1628. This work includes instrumental canzonas for one, two, three and four parts over thoroughbass, as well as a few other pieces such as the Toccata for Spinet and Violin.
His vocal music includes a number of masses, motets and madrigals.
Frescobaldi was one of the inventors of the modern conception of tempo, making a compromise between the ancient white mensural notation with a rigid tactus and the modern notion of tempo, which is characterized by acceleration and deceleration within a piece.
Frescobaldi's music was a very important influence on later composers, among them Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach is known to have owned a copy of Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali).
Francesco Saverio Geminiani
(Italy, Lucca 1679 – Ireland, Dublin 1762)
Geminiano studied first in Milano, later in Rome as a pupil of Corelli and A.Scarlatti. Being not successfully in his positions at orchestras in Lucca and Naples, he moved 1714 to London, where his reputation as a virtuoso violin player and also a violin teacher increased quickly. In two big concert tours he went to Ireland, but lived most of his time between 1749 and 1755 in Paris, editing the French translation of his book “ The Art of Playing the Violin”. This schoolbook is still the base of the modern technique of violins.
Geminiano only wrote instrumental compositions, mostly sonatas for violins and concerti grossi, shaped by his teacher Corelli, but enriched by his own virtuosic elements. Because of his compositions with virtuosity and allegro expressions , he seems to be one of the precursors of the musical era of the Rococo.
Friedrich Hartmann Graf
(Germany, Rudolstadt 1727 - Augsburg 1795 )
As a son of the brandmaster of Rudolstadt Friedrich Hartmann got his musical education from his father. After coming back from a war captivity in England, Graf became a position as a solo flautist and conductor in Hamburg, where he worked together with Telemann.
Many tours took him to England, Holland, Italy, Suisse and Germany.
Between 1768 bis 1772, he worked at the royal court of Den Haag as the first solo flautist. Because of his engagement for the sacred music of the Protestant church he became director of all Protestant churches and founded a concert -society for the middle class in Augsburg. Here he met Mozart, who did not appreciate his compositions and who called Graf “a skinny composer of flute concerts”.
In 1780 he was appointed to London to take over the direction of the “professional concerts” as a successor of Johann Christian Bach. The university of Oxford nominated Graf as a doctor of Music, but despite his tremendous success and reputation in England, Graf preferred to move back to Augsburg.
Graf wrote symphonies, oratories, instrumental concerts, cantatas and many compositions for chamber music.
Georg Friedrich Händel
(Germany, Halle 1685 – England, London 1759)
George Frederic Händel was born in the Saxonian city of Halle - Germany. His father was a surgeon and valet of the duke of Saxe-Weißenfels. He had wanted his son to become a lawyer, so he was rather uncomfortable about his son’s early interest in music, which is said to have been discovered by the duke himself having heard the 10-year-old Handel playing the organ. Händel got his first music lessons with the local organist. After studying law for a year, Händel went to Hamburg to play violin at the public opera house. In 1705, he seized the opportunity to write his first opera “Almira”, which was quite a success.
After this success, he was invited by the duke of Florence to come to Italy, where he stayed for several years. Here he visited all major musical centres and met composers such as Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Corelli, from whom he learned a lot about Italian musical style. After a short time as court composer in Hanover, Händel went to England, where he lived for the rest of his life. Here he was a co-founder of the Royal Academy of Music - an institution which tried to establish Italian opera in London. After writing 42 operas, including famous ones like Giulio Cesare (1724), Alcina (1735) and Serse (1735), Händel went on to write 22 oratorios (like Messiah in 1742). Besides his operas and oratorios, Händel wrote orchestral music and chamber works, such as his famous “Water Music” (1717) and “Music for the Royal Fireworks” (1748/49).
Joseph Haydn
(Austria, Rohrau 1732 – Vienna 1809)
Joseph Haydn showed his unparalleled musical talent even as a young boy. At the age of eight years he was chosen as a choirboy for the Stephansdom in Vienna. In 1761, he entered the service of the dukes of Esterházy who maintained an orchestra of about 20 musicians and a troupe of singers for their Hungarian court theatre at Esterháza. Haydn spent nearly 30 years in the service of the Esterházy court, highly regarded and celebrated, while the publications of his works made him famous all over Europe. He was admired by both Mozart and Beethoven, whom he had taught music for a short time. However, in 1790 Duke Nicolaus died, and his son dissolved the orchestra and dismissed Haydn with a life-long pension. Haydn spent the winters 1791/92 and 1794/95 in London, where he had a commission for several symphonies. Here he was enthusiastically received and awarded the honorary doctor at Oxford University. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, which established one of the most prominent genres in 19th century music. He is also considered as the creator of the string quartet. Apart from these, he wrote oratorios (“The Creation”, “The Seasons”), operas, masses and church music in general, concerts, sonatas, songs and much more.
Josef Martin Kraus
(Germany, Miltenberg 1756 – Sweden, Stockholm 1792)
Joseph Martin Kraus was a composer in the classical era who is sometimes referred to as "the Swedish Mozart."
Kraus showed his musical talent at a very early stage. At the age of 12, Kraus joined the Jesuit Gymnasium and Music Seminar in Mannheim, where he studied German and Latin literature and music. He received a rigorous musical education, especially in violin technique
Later, he studied law in Mainz, but changed to Erfurt, where both Catholic and Evangelistic music was flourishing. Very soon, Kraus neglected his studies of law and focused fully on music and literature. Before he became ninteen, he was involved into the „Sturm und Drang“ movement in Göttingen, which influenced both his writing and his music. Kraus had become friendly with his Swedish fellow, who convinced Kraus to accompany him to Stockholm to apply for a position at the court of King Gustav III. After three years of extreme poverty, Kraus was appointed vice-Kapellmeister of the Royal Swedish Opera and director of the Royal Academy of Music. Gustav III sent Kraus on a five-year Grand Tour of Europe to learn all he could about music abroad. On this trip, Kraus met Christoph Willibald Gluck and Joseph Haydn. During his journey, Kraus also wrote his famous flute quintet in D Major, that broke with all the erstwhile conventions that governed such pieces. The outer and inner form of that work were groundbreaking comparing with everything previously composed at the time.
After Vienna, his journey also took him throughout Italy, France, and England, where he witnessed the Händel Centenary celebrations in 1785.
In 1787, he returned to Sweden, where he died in the age of 36.
Giovanni Legrenzi
(Italy, Clusone near Bergamo -1690)
Legrenzi was an Italian composer of opera, vocal and instrumental music, and organist, of the Baroque era. He was one of the most prominent composers in Venice in the late 17th century, and extremely influential on the development of late Baroque idioms across northern Italy.
He probably received his early training in Clusone. There he served as organist to Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1656 he took a position at Ferrara as the maestro di cappella at the Accademia dello Spirito Santo, where he remained nine years. Later he was rejected for positions in many cities, including Vienna, Milan, Parma, Bologna, and Venice; and he declined positions in Modena and Bergamo. In 1681 he was hired at St. Mark's in Venice as assistant maestro di cappella, and became full maestro di cappella after four years. Legrenzi was active in most of the genres current in northern Italy in the late 17th century, including sacred vocal music, opera, oratorio, and varieties of instrumental music. Though best known as a composer of instrumental sonatas, he was predominantly a composer of liturgical music with a distinctly dramatic character. The bulk of his instrumental music may also be included in this category, since it would have been used primarily as a substitute for liturgical items at Mass or Vespers. His operas were immensely popular (and extravagantly presented) in their day, though like his oratorios, few have survived. His later dance music was certainly connected with the operatic repertoire, though the function of an early collection is less clear.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Austria, Salzburg 1756 – Vienna 1791)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is simply one of the greatest musical geniuses ever to have lived. Already at the age of four or five years he was regarded as a prodigy and his father Leopold, who was court composer in Salzburg, proudly presented him everywhere in Europe. At this time, Mozart already knew the state of the art in music, being in contact with such musical authorities as Johann Christian Bach in London, Padre Martini in Italy and Joseph Haydn in Vienna, whom he adored very much. Mozart’s excellent musical education allowed him to write his first music at the age of six years. He was appointed concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra in 1769, and made his first steps into opera as an eleven-year-old. But his great successes came after he had broken with the Salzburg court in 1781. He went to Vienna, where he tried to make a living by introducing himself as a piano virtuoso and giving concerts to an amazed Vienna audience, after he was unsuccessful in getting a post at the Viennese Imperial court. AAlthough, Vienna was the place that saw the birth of his greatest masterpieces, like “The Abduction from the Seraglio”, “Le Nozze di Figaro” or “The Magic Flute”. Prague was the city of his greatest successes, with a triumphant “Nozze” and “Don Giovanni”. Mozart excels in every genre of music, from symphonies to chamber music, making him one of the most versatile composers in music history. His last work is the unfinished “Requiem”, an anonymous commission, which gave rise to much Romantic speculation about his untimely death. As was the custom of his day, his funeral was executed without much pomp, and no grave is left of one of the greatest musicians in Western history.
Henry Purcell
(England, London 1659- 1695)
Purcell has often been called England's finest native composer. His compositions incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements but devised a peculiarly English style of Baroque music.
Purcell is said to have been composing at nine years old, but the earliest work that can be certainly identified as his is an ode for the King's birthday, written in 1670. He attended Westminster School and in 1676 he was appointed organist at Westminster Abbey.
Purcell now devoted himself almost entirely to the composition of sacred music, and for six years severed his connection with the theatre. However, during the early part of the year, he had produced two important works for the stage.
The composition of his chamber opera Dido and Aeneas, which forms a very important landmark in the history of English dramatic music, has been attributed to this period, and its earliest production may well have predated the documented one of 1689. It was performed in 1689 in cooperation with Josiah Priest, a dancing master and the choreographer for the Dorset Garden Theatre. This oevre is occasionally considered the first genuine English opera
At the time Dido and Aeneas never found its way to the theatre, though it appears to have been very popular in private circles. It is believed to have been extensively copied, but only one song was printed by Purcell's widow in Orpheus Britannicus, and the complete work remained in manuscript until 1840, when it was printed firstly.
Giuseppe Sammartini
(Italy, Milan 1695 – England, London 1750)
Giuseppe Sammartini has been a contemporary of J.S. Bach. As an oboist, it is likely that he played the flute and recorder as well: indeed, there are 24 sonatas for flute (or violin) and bass, 30 trios involving flute, and his best-known composition is the Concerto in F for recorder. Oddly, though he wrote chamber works and a concerto for oboe, he produced substantially less for his chosen instrument.
Born in Milan, Sammartini was the son of French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin and older brother of the better-known composer (and also oboist) Giovanni Battista Sammartini. Giuseppe's first surviving compositions date to the mid-1710s and include the aforementioned Oboe Concerto in F major. Around the time of that publication, Giuseppe became member of a Milan orchestra and by 1720 he had joined that city's Regio Ducal Theater orchestra. In 1729, Giuseppe departed Italy for Brussels, where he remained briefly before traveling to London, the city he would settle in for the remainder of his career. He was already recognized in England as a promising composer, owing to the publication there of his 12 Trio Sonatas. But it was his musicianship on the oboe that made him a celebrity in the English capital. In the 1730s Sammartini played in Handel's orchestra and performed in many productions of Handel's operas, including that of Arminio, which features difficult obbligato writing for the oboe in the Act II aria, "Quella fiamme."
In 1736 Sammartini was appointed music teacher in the household of Prince Frederick of Wales. His duties included instructing the Prince's wife Augusta and her children in music, and undoubtedly involved many private chamber music performances before the Prince and his retinue. Sammartini held this post until his death.
Josef Martin Schmitt
(Germany, Oberthulba 1739 – Würzburg 1808)
If more of his compositions would have been discovered, Josef Martin Schmitt would become as famous as his celebrated colleges of the classical era. But, unfortunately there are only his six quartets for strings, which have been found by accident in the archive of the library of the German University of Eichstätt.
Nevertheless it is proved that Schmitt was borne in Oberthulba a small village of Franconia, which is a part of Bavaria/ Germany. Although he lived most of his live in Bavaria, he travelled to Milano and to Paris, where he studied the musical influence of his contemporaries. In Paris he stayed more than a year before he returned to Würzburg. Here he died in the age of 69.
Franz Schubert
(Austria/ Vienna 1797 – Vienna 1828)
Six years after Mozart’s death, while Haydn was at the height of his fame and Beethoven was a rising star in Viennese musical life, another genius was born - Franz Schubert. He had musical instructions since his early years, was a member of the “Wiener Saengerknaben”, and studied composition with Antonio Salieri. The heart-piece of his oeuvre is his “lieder”, of which he had written 500 before his 20th birthday. Schumann quite sarcastically commented that “little by little, he would have set the whole German literature to music”. As a 17-year-old he wrote music for Goethe’s “Erlkoenig”, revealing him just as skilful as in his later works. For some time, he was employed by the Esterházy family as music adviser to the princesses, but apart from that he was mostly jobless, living from his friends’ support. Since 1822 he intensively dedicated himself to instrumental works. Unlike his classical ancestors, Schubert did not write music for the noble society, but for bourgeois entertainment. Among his most famous compositions are the piano quintet D667 (“The trout”), the “Unfinished symphony” (Nr. 8 b-minor), the quartet D804 (“Death and the maiden”) But his fame mostly stems from lied cycles such as “Die Schoene Muellerin”, the moody and dark “Winterreise” and “Schwanengesang”. His chamber and piano oeuvres are proof of his extreme mastery. In 1828, on the age of 31, Schumann died of typhoid fever.
Alessandro Stradella
(Italy, Rome ca. 1644 - Genoa 1682)
As one of the earlier members of an elite caste of composers, Alessandro Stradella is considered one of the most versatile and influential musical figures of the mid-seventeenth century. Stradella first appears in the historical record as a singer at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden (stationed in Rome), who, by 1663, was sufficiently impressed with Stradella's musical skills to begin commissioning compositions from him. Soon other Roman notables followed suit, and Stradella produced an assortment of motets, prologues and intermezzi throughout the 1660s. With a friend he attempted to embezzle money from the Roman Catholic Church, but was found out: he fled the city, only returning much later when he thought it was safe. Unfortunately his numerous incautious affairs with women began to make him enemies among the powerful men of the city, and he had to leave Rome for good. After at least one unsuccessful attempt at his life, he was finally murdered on the Piazza Bianchi in Genoa by a hired assassin because of another such dalliance.
Musically, his reputation is based chiefly on his pioneering rôle in the development of the concerto grosso. Stradella was an extremely influential composer at the time, though his fame was eclipsed in the next century by Corelli, Vivaldi and others. Probably his greatest significance is in originating the concerto grosso: while Corelli in his Op. 6 was the first to publish works under this title, Stradella clearly uses the format earlier in one of his Sonate di viole. Since the two knew each other, a direct influence is likely.
During his short life Stradella composed operas and other stage works, many oratorios and other compositions for the church, hundreds of cantatas, and 27 instrumental works.
Georg Friedrich Telemann
(Germany, Magdeburg 1681 - Hamburg 1767)
Already the youth showed remarkable talent in music, but, outside of some early lessons in reading tablature, Telemann was self-taught and was capable of playing the flute, violin, viola da gamba, oboe, trombone, double bass, and several keyboard instruments. Telemann began to write music from childhood, producing an opera by age 12. At the age of 20, the composer met in Halle with 16-year-old Georg Friedrich Händel and became good friend with him. Telemann began writing cantatas in Leipzig and quickly became a local celebrity. In 1702, he was named director of the Leipzig Opera, and over the next three years he wrote four operas specifically for this company. Telemann was also one of the first composers to concentrate on the business of publishing his own music, and at least forty early prints of his music are known from editions which he prepared and sold himself. Telemann was considered the most important German composer of his days and his reputation outlasted him for some time, but ultimately it was unable to withstand the shadow cast of Johann Sebastian Bach. Telemann enormous output, perhaps the largest of any classical composer in history, includes parts of at least 31 cantata cycles, many operas, concertos, oratorios, songs, music for civic occasions and church services, passion, orchestral suites and abundant amounts of chamber music. While many of these works have been lost, most still exist. The inevitable revival of interest in Telemann did not arrive until the 1920s, but has grown exponentially ever since, and with the twenty first century in full swing more of Telemann's music is played, known, understood and studied than at any time in history. Telemann's long life ended at the age 86 in 1767.
Antonio Vivaldi
(Italy, Venice 1678 – Austria, Vienna 1741)
The “red priest”, as he was called due to his hair colour and the fact that he had become a cleric in 1703, Antonio Vivaldi is one of the few baroque composers to have survived the ages. He is most famous for his numberless concerti, although he was as much of a vocal and opera composer. He learned to play the violin from his father, who was in the orchestra of San Marco in Venice. His main career was in teaching music, but he was also a conductor and composer in residence at the Ospedale della Pietà (a girls’ orphanage). The girls had to fulfil many musical tasks there. Vivaldi wrote most of his cantatas and concerti for them, usually performed on Sundays. His sacred music was composed for San Marco, with special regard to its unique acoustics.
Vivaldi was not restricted to Venice, though. He travelled quite frequently through Europe, like Prague, Vienna and Amsterdam to make known his works and have them printed. His oeuvre is immensely vast. So far, more than 450 solo concertos are known, 49 operas, symphonies, sonatas and sacred music.
