Composers

Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa was born in Aversa, part of the kingdom of Naples, December 17, 1749. His parents were poor, but anxious to give their son a good education. After moving to Naples they sent him to a free school connected with one of the monasteries of that city.

The organist of the monastery, Padre Polcano, was struck with the boy's intellect, and instructed him in the elements of music, and the ancient and modern literature of his country.

Cimarosa then studied at the Conservatorio of Santa Maria di Loreto, where he remained for eleven years. Piccinni, Sacchini are mentioned amongst his teachers.

At the age of twenty-three Cimarosa began his career as a composer with a comic opera called Le Stravaganze del Conte, first performed at the Teatro del Fiorentini at Naples in 1772. The work met with approval, and was followed in the same year by Le magie di Merlina e Zoroastro (also known as Le Pazzie di Stellidaura e Zoroastro), a farce full of humor and eccentricity. This work also was successful, and the fame of the young composer began to spread all over Italy.

In 1774 he was invited to Rome to write an opera for the stagione of that year; and there he produced another comic opera called L'Italiana in Londra. The next thirteen years of his life he wrote a number of operas for the various theaters of Italy.

From 1784-87 he lived in Florence, writing exclusively for the theater. The productions of this period of his life are very numerous, consisting of operas, both comic and serious, cantatas, and various sacred compositions. The following works may be mentioned amongst many others: Caio Mario; the three biblical operas, Assalone, La Giuditta and Il Sacrificio d'Abramo; also Il Convito di Pietra; and La Ballerina amante, a pretty comic opera first performed at Venice with enormous success.

About the year 1788 Cimarosa went to St. Petersburg by invitation of the empress Catherine the Great. He remained there four years and wrote an enormous number of compositions, mostly of the nature of pièces d'occasion.

In 1792 Cimarosa left St. Petersburg, and went to Vienna at the invitation of the emperor Leopold II. Here he produced his masterpiece, Il Matrimonio segreto, which ranks amongst the highest achievements of light operatic music.

In 1793 Cimarosa returned to Naples, where Il Matrimonio segreto and other works were received with great applause. Amongst the works belonging to his last stay in Naples may be mentioned the charming opera Le Astuzie feminili.

During the occupation of Naples by the troops of the French Republic, Cimarosa joined the liberal party, and on the return of the Bourbons, was, like many of his political friends, condemned to death.

By the intercession of influential admirers his sentence was commuted to banishment. He left Naples with the intention of returning to St. Petersburg but his health was failing, and he died in Venice on January 11, 1801. He worked until the last moment of his life, one of his operas, Artemizia, remains unfinished.

Francesco Durante

Francesco Durante was born in Frattamaggiore, Napoli in 1684. He was a leading composer of church music and an outstanding teacher of international reputation.

At an early age he entered the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesú Cristo, where he studied under Gaetano Greco. In 1728 he became the primo maestro of the conservatory replacing the elderly Gaetano Greco. Among his pupils at the conservatory were Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Girolamo Abos, Domenico Terradellas and Joseph Doll.

In 1742, he was appointed primo maestro of the largest and oldest of the four Neapolitan conservatories, Santa Maria di Loreto. His fame as a teacher was considerable, his students included, Pasquale Anfossi, TommasoTraetta, Pietro Guglielmi, Antonio Sacchini, Fedele Fenaroli, and Niccoló Piccinni whom he referred to as "my son."

Unlike his contemporaries Porpora, Leo and Vinci he gained recognition through his church music. He was the first composer in Naples to set several complete Mass cycles in a cappella stile antico. One he labelled Missa in Palestrina. Not a prolific composer, his music exhibits great skill and invention and a dramatic flair well suited to the style of music he chose to write.

Francesco Durante was married three times, died in Naples at the age of 71 and was buried in the Church of San Lorenzo.

Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980.

Photo by Studio Stence

Tommaso Giordani
Naples, Italy 1738, Dublin, Ireland 1806

Conductor, impresario and composer of over 50 Operas, T. Giordani began his career as a member of a family-run touring opera group.

His father was Carmine Giordani (or Giordano), who was born 1695 in Naples, died after 1762, probably in London. From Naples, the family gradually moved northwards through Italy to Graz, Austria (1748), Frankfurt (1750) and Amsterdam (1752).

Tommaso was trained in Naples and moved with the family to London around 1752. After about three years at the Covent Garden, he brought out his first comic Opera "La commediante fatta cantatrice".

In 1764 he settled in Dublin, becoming one of leading musicians in the Irish capital. In 1781 he returned to London and two years later went back to Dublin where he spent the remainder of his life.

Among his compositions are a number of operas, an Oratorio, Isaac (1767), and a large quantity of overtures, Sonatas, Concertos, quartets (mostly string quartets, some with flute or keyboard), trios for violin, flute and basso continuo, songs, etc.

He was organist of St. Mary's Por-Cathedral, Dublin, from 1784 to 1798, and conducted his own Te Deum at the celebration upon the recovery of King George III, April 30, 1789.

Among his pupils were Lady Morgan, Tom Cooke, and John Field, the inventor of the "Nocturne", who made his debut at one of Giordani's Rotunda concerts (4 April 1792).

His last opera, The Cottage, Festival, was produced at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, November 28, 1796.

Johann Adolf Hasse

Known also as "Il Sassone", he was born in Bergedorf, Germany in 1699. For several decades he was the most admired composer of opera seria in Italy and Germany.

During the 1720s he lived in Naples for many years where he was a pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti.

His finest operas, written between 1730 and 1760, represent a neo-classical style perfectly matched to Pietro Metastasio's text, that he frequently used.

His skill at writing for the voice was flawless; Bel Canto was for him a beautiful display of lyric melodies, to which everything else was subordinate.

As Charles Burney remarked, "Hasse was the most natural and elegant composer for vocal music... who always regarded the voice as the first object of attention in a theater ...preserving its importance as a painter, throwing the strongest light upon the capital figure of his piece."

François-Joseph Fétis observed, “few composers gained such fame as Hasse and yet as quickly forgotten.”

Until Frederick the Great's death in 1786, Hasse's operas and sacred works were performed in Berlin, however, in Italy his music was almost completely neglected.

He died in Venice in 1783.

Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980

Niccolò Jommelli (1714 – 1774)

The Italian composer Niccolò Jommelli, master of opera and sacred music, was among those who initiated the mid-18th century modifications to singer-dominated Italian opera. His greatest achievements represent a combination of German complexity, French decorative elements and Italian brio, welded together by and extraordinary gift for dramatic effectiveness.

Jommelli was born in Aversa, Naples, Italy on September 10, 1714. From 1725 to 1728, at the age of eleven, he studied at the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio a Capuana, thereafter moving to the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini. His first Opera L'errore amoroso was premiered in Naples in 1737.

Soon thereafter Jommelli began writing serious opera. His first effort, Ricimero re di Goti, was premiered in Rome in 1740. In 1741 the composer moved to Bologna. There he studied with Giovanni Battista Martini, who was also a teacher of Mozart, thirty years later.

Between 1743 or 1745, Jommelli served as Musical Director at the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice, an orphanage for girls. Here he focused mainly on producing sacred works.

Jommelli began writing more sacred music and won a position as Maestro di Cappella at St. Peter's Basilica. Among the people supporting Jommelli for this job was Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who also furthered the composer's career by helping him travel to and premiere the opera Achille in Sciro in Vienna in 1749.

He did not, however, cut back on composing operas. Perhaps influenced by his time in Vienna, where ensembles and choruses were much more fashionable than in Italy, his operas include an unusual number of these pieces as well as some electrifying accompanied recitative.

Aside from musical innovations, Jommelli seems to have been interested in changing dramatic conventions as well. That he may have been a proficient poet is suggested by his election to the Arcadian Academy in Rome in 1754. Members were expected to improvise poetry on the spot, and very few composers were granted the distinction of membership. On a practical level, this may mean that Jommelli had more to do with writing his own librettos than people have assumed. This is especially interesting in that two of his librettos, Sofonisba (1745) and Iphigenia in Aulide (1751), break with convention by allowing death to be shown on stage and having an opera end in tragedy.

In 1753 at the Stuttgart court of Carl Eugen Duke of Württemberg, Jommelli oversaw a production of his La clemenza di Tito for the birthday of Duchess Friederike. He was then named Ober-Kapellmeister to the court. Because of his great interest in opera, the Duke insisted on choosing the plots of the operas to be written, but he allowed Jommelli free rein otherwise. Jommelli had, not only, some of Europe's best musicians, but also outstanding choreographers and designers at his disposal.

The operas of Jommelli and his librettist, Mattia Verazi, were highly innovative in several respects. They were based on Greek mythology instead of Roman history. They also incorporated many of the characteristics of French opera, such as large scene groups including not only recitative and aria (the traditional Italian combination), but also orchestral accompanied recitative, ensembles, and chorus. The act finales go even further by integrating ballet as well.

For special occasions Jommelli also wrote sacred music for the Duke including a Requiem for his mother (1756) and a Te Deum (1763).

In 1768, Jommelli returned to Naples and agreed to write one serious opera and one comic opera per year for King Jose I of Portugal.

In his last years, Jommelli wrote operas for Naples and Rome as well as fulfilling his responsibilities to Lisbon. In August of 1771, he suffered a stroke and was unable to write for almost a year. Thereafter, he began work on what was to be his last opera for King Jose I; Clelia, and audiences in Lisbon enthusiastically received it. From 1769 to 1777, up to four Jommelli operas a year were heard in Lisbon.

Jommelli died in August 1774, greatly mourned throughout Europe. Some, such as the German composer and theorist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart called him "Europe's greatest composer." Despite such praise, Jommelli was soon forgotten. Only within the last twenty-five years have his operas been rediscovered.

Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980

Leonardo Leo

Leonardo Leo, born in 1694 San Vito degli Schiavoni, then part of the Kingdom of Napoli, was one of the leading Neapolitan composers of his day, especially of theatre and church music.

He became student at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini and was a pupil of Francesco Provenzale and Nicola Fago.

From 1720 until his death he received a continuous stream of commissions for operas in Naples, Rome, Venice, Bologna, Turin and Milan.

One of his greatest contributions to musical development at this time was an attempt to reform religious music in Naples. His 8 part Miserere is an excellent example of these developments as are the oratorios Sant' Elena al Calvario and La morte di Abele to texts by Metastasio.

There was in fact a great rivalry between Leo and the other great Neapolitan composer of church music Francesco Durante, dividing at that time the city into Leisti and Durantisti.

He became principal organist of the vice-regal chapel on Alessandro Scarlatti's death in 1725 and succeeded Leonardo Vinci in 1730, becoming pro-vicemaestro. On Mancini’s death in 1737, he became vice-maestro of the royal chapel.

Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980

Photo by John Saponara

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736)

G. B. Pergolesi studied music under Francesco Santi, before going to Naples between 1720 and 1724, studying at Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesú Cristo under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others.

He spent most of his brief life working for aristocratic patrons like the Principe di Stigliano and the Duca di Maddaloni.

Pergolesi was one of the most important early composers of Opera Buffa. His Opera Seria Il Prigioner superbo contained the two act from La serva padrona (The Servant Mistress, August 28, 1733), which became a very popular work in its own right.

When it was performed in Paris in 1752, it prompted the so-called Querelle des Bouffons ("quarrel of the comedians") between supporters of serious French opera by the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau and supporters of new Italian comic opera.

Pergolesi was held up as a model of the Italian style during this quarrel, which divided Paris's musical community for two years.

Among Pergolesi's other operatic works are his first opera La conversione e morte di San Gugliemo (1731), Lo frate ‘nnamurato (1732, to a Neapolitan text), L'Olimpiade (January 31, 1735) and Il Flaminio (1735). All his operas were premiered in Naples apart from L’Olimpiade, which was first given in Rome. Pergolesi also wrote sacred music, including a Mass in F.

It is his Stabat Mater (1736), however, which is his best-known sacred work, which was commissioned by the Confraternita dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo (the monks of the brotherhood of San Luigi di Palazzo).

The Stabat Mater remained popular, becoming the most frequently printed work of the 18th century, and being arranged by a number of other composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who used it as the basis for his Psalm Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083.

Pergolesi wrote a number of secular instrumental works, including a Violin Sonata and a Violin Concerto.

Pergolesi died at the age of twenty-six in Pozzuoli, near Naples, from tuberculosis.

Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980

Niccoló (Antonio) Porpora
Naples, Italy 17 August 1686  – 3 March 1768)

N. Porpora graduated from the Music Conservatory Poveri di Gesú Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti.

Porpora's first opera, Agrippina, was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, Berenice, was performed at Rome.

In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as maestro di cappella in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome.

However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing.

At the Neapolitan Music Conservatory of Sant'Onofrio, and at the Poveri di Gesú Cristo, he trained the famous Carlo Broschi, known as "Farinelli"; Caffarelli, Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715-1721.

Following his appointment as Kapellmeister at the Dresden Court of the Elector of Saxony, in 1752 Porpora went to Vienna, where he gave music lessons to the young Franz Joseph Haydn, who later stated that he had learned from the maestro "the true fundamentals of composition". Then Porpora returned to Naples in 1759.

A good linguist, who was admired for the idiomatic fluency of his recitatives, and a man of considerable literary culture, Porpora was also celebrated for his conversational wit. He was well-read in Latin and Italian literature, wrote poetry and spoke French, German and English.

Besides some four dozen operas, there are oratorios, solo cantatas with keyboard accompaniment, motets and vocal serenades. Among his larger works, his 1720 opera Orlando, one Mass, his Venetian Vespers and the opera Arianna in Nasso.

Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti was born in Napoli in 1685.

His musical gifts developed with prodigious rapidity. After settling in Roma with his father Alessandro, he became the pupil of the most eminent musicians in Italy, Pasquini and Gasparini.

Scarlatti was a familiar figure at the meetings of the Accademie Poetico-Musicali hosted by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, where he met Thomas Roseingrave who became his enthusiastic champion, publishing in London the first edition of Scarlatti's Essercizi per gravicembalo (1738-9).

Although a composer of vocal music, sacred and secular, his fame rests on the hundreds of keyboard sonatas, nearly all in the same binary form, in which he gave freedom to his imagination, stimulated by the new sounds, sights and customs of Iberia and by the astonishing gifts of his royal pupil and patron.

In these Sonatas he explored new worlds of virtuoso technique, employing such devices as hand-crossing, rapidly repeated notes, wide leaps in both hands and countless other means of achieving a devastating brilliance of effect.

In 1738, at the Capuchin convent of S. Antonio del Prado in Madrid, sponsored by King John V of Portugal, he became Knight of the Order of Santiago. He died in Madrid in 1757.