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Giacomo Carissimi (baptized April 18, 1605 – January 12, 1674) was an Italian composer, one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque, or, more accurately, the Roman School of music.

Biography

Of his early life almost nothing is known. His father was a barrel maker, and at the age of twenty Giacomo became chapel-master at Assisi. In 1628 he obtained the same position at the church of Sant'Apollinare belonging to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, which he held until his death. This was despite him receiving several offers to work in very prominent establishments, including an offer to take over from Claudio Monteverdi at Saint Mark's in Venice. In 1637 he was ordained a priest. He seems never to have left Italy.

He died in Rome in 1674.

His successor as maestro di cappella at the Collegio Germanico in 1686, describes him as: Very frugal in his domestic affairs, very noble manners towards friends and acquaintances, tall, thin and prone to melancholy.

The great achievements generally ascribed to him are the further development of the recitative, introduced by Monteverdi, and of infinite importance in the history of dramatic music; the further development of the chamber-cantata, by which Carissimi superseded the concertato madrigals which had themselves replaced the madrigals of the late Renaissance; and the development of the oratorio, of which he was the first significant composer.

His position in the history of church music and vocal chamber music is somewhat similar to that of Cavalli in the history of opera. While Luigi Rossi was his predecessor in developing the chamber-cantata, Carissimi was the composer who first made this form the vehicle for the most intellectual style of chamber-music, a function which it continued to perform until the death of Alessandro Scarlatti, Astorga and Marcello.

Carissimi is also noted as one of the first composers of oratorios, with ''Jephte'' probably the best known, as well as ''Jonas''; this work and others are important as definitely establishing the form of oratorio unaccompanied by dramatic action, which maintained its hold for two hundred years. The name comes from their presentation at the Oratory of Santissimo Crocifisso in Rome. He also may claim the merit of having given greater variety and interest to the instrumental accompaniments of vocal compositions. Dr Burney and Sir John Hawkins published specimens of his compositions in their works on the history of music; and Dr Aldrich collected an almost complete set of his compositions, at present in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. The British Museum also possesses numerous works by Carissimi. Most of his oratorios are in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.

Carissimi was active at the time when secular music was about to usurp the dominance of sacred music in Italy; the change was decisive, and permanent. When he began composing, the influence of the previous generations of Roman composers was still heavy (for instance, the style of Palestrina); and when his career came to a close the operatic forms, as well as the instrumental secular forms, were predominant. In addition Carissimi was important as a teacher, and his influence spread far into Germany and France: much of the musical style of Charpentier, for example, is dependent on the earlier composer.

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Category:1605 births Category:1674 deaths Category:People from the Province of Rome Category:Italian composers Category:Baroque composers Category:17th-century Italian people

Life

He was introduced to the Italian concertato, polychoral and monodic styles — because Schütz had journeyed in Italy when a young man and he had met Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi — as well as the style of Sweelinck's pupils, some of whom had settled in Hamburg. Weckmann travelled to Denmark in 1637 with Schütz, became organist in Dresden at the Electoral Court of Saxony from 1638 to 1642, and returned to Denmark until 1647 (during the Thirty Years' War).

During a new (and his last) stay in Dresden from 1649 to 1655, he met Johann Jakob Froberger during a musical competition which had been organized by the Elector. They remained friends and in correspondence with each other. In 1655, after a competition, he was named titular organist at Saint James church (Jakobkirche) in Hamburg, and spent his remaining life there. He founded a renowned orchestral ensemble, the so-called ''Collegium Musicum'' in Hamburg. This was the most productive period of his life: his compositions of this time include a collection of 1663, which set sacred texts mentioning the terrible plague which killed his first wife and many of his colleagues in Hamburg that year, including Heinrich Scheidemann.

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Category:1616 births Category:1674 deaths Category:Baroque composers Category:German composers Category:Organists and composers in the North German tradition Category:German classical organists Category:Burials in Germany

Biography

Sanz learned to play guitar while studying under Lelio Colista and was influenced by music of the Italian guitarists Foscarini, Granata, and Corbetta. When Sanz returned to Spain he was appointed instructor of guitar to Don Juan (John of Austria), the illegitimate son of King Philip IV and Maria Calderon, a noted actress of the day.

In 1674 he wrote his now famous Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española, published in Saragossa and dedicated to Don Juan. A second book entitled Libro Segundo de cifras sobre la guitarra española was printed in Saragossa in 1675. A third book, Libro tercero de mùsica de cifras sobre la guitarra española, was added to the first and second books, and all three were published together under the title of the first book in 1697, eventually being published in eight editions. The ninety works in this masterpiece are his only known contribution to the repertory of the guitar and include compositions in both punteado ("plucked") style and rasqueado ("strummed") style.

In addition to his musical skills, Gaspar Sanz was noted in his day for his literary works as a poet and writer, and was the author of some poems and two books now largely forgotten.

He died in Madrid in 1710.

Influence

Works

Volume 1: ''Instruccion de musica sobre la guitarra española'' (Zaragoza, 1674)

Volume 2: ''Libro segundo, de cifras sobre la guitarra española'' (Zaragoza, 1675)

Volume 3: ''Libro tercero de musica de cifras sobre la guitarra española'' (Zaragoza, 1697)

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Manuscripts

Category:Spanish composers Category:Baroque composers Category:Spanish classical guitarists Category:Composers for the classical guitar Category:People from Bajo Aragón Category:1640 births Category:1710 deaths

Biography

In 1694, he became court-composer to the duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, though he had probably come to the court already as early as 1692 to study its renowned operas, which had been going on since 1691, when the city had built a 1200-seater opera-house. Keiser put on his first opera ''Procris und Cephalus'' there and, the same year, his opera ''Basilius'' was put on at Hamburg and, as the musicologist Johann Mattheson noted, "received with great success and applause."

This was a fruitful period for him - composing not only operas, but arias, duets, cantatas, sérénades, church music and big oratorios, background music - all for the city's use.

About 1697 he settled permanently in Hamburg, and became the chief composer at the highly renowned ''Gänsemarktoper'' (now rebuilt as the Hamburg State Opera) in Hamburg from 1697 to 1717, however was actually first the director in 1702, and wasn't at various times from then to 1717, almost each time due to political instabilites. From 1703 to 1709, Keiser changed the opera house from being a public institution to a commercial venture with two to three performances a week, in contrast to the opera houses intended for the nobility.

He helped transition opera from the mid-baroque idea of it, to the late-baroque idea of it. He not only did that, but even introduced a more varied type of aria into his operas, with more passive arias, and also faster arias being introduced into his bilinugal and non-bilinugal operas all by the 1703-04 season, with his five-star works, Nebukadnezar, and Salomon. With Keiser's operas is the framework of his younger rival, Händel's works.

Early in 1704, when he was conducting the operas Nebukadnezar and Salomon in Hamburg, the season had to be unexpectedly concluded, for reasons most likely related to government affairs. So he went to Brunswick, and afterward Weissenfels, to reconnect with areas he was previously active in. He ended up coming out with a masterpiece, ''Almira'', at Weissenfells, in July. He stayed there for a while, spending many holidays there, eventually heading back to Hamburg shortly after Easter in 1705, to produce a comback to Georg Friedrich Händel's ''Nero'', produced in February 1705. Surely Keiser would be able to produce a success to the 20 year old composer's ambitious work.

Keiser would have to face Händel again, but this time he would be at home, and Händel had switched to the phonetic Italian version of his name, Georgio Friderico Hendel. Hendel would put on what was planned as a double opera, but was in fact two, Florindo, and Daphne, he did that in January 1708, coming back from Italy. Keiser would counter that by eventually coming out with ''La forza dell'amore oder Die von Paris entführte Helena'' and ''Desiderius, König der Langobarden'' in the 1708-09 season, but not as the theater's manager, but as someone responding to political insecurities causing the opera company to be disorderly. Keiser worked in the background.

Keiser would continue as the director probably when things got more stable in the city, maybe in 1710, and he advanced in composing, coming with his own passionmusik in 1712, which Hendel would readily challenge in 1716.

In 1718, with the Hamburg Opera defunct, he left Hamburg to seek other employment, going to Thuringia and then Stuttgart. From this period three manuscripts of sonatas in trio for flute, violin and basso continuo survive. During the summer 1721, he returned to Hamburg, but only a few weeks later made a rapid exit to Copenhagen with a Hamburg opera troop, probably because of the growing influence of Georg Philipp Telemann, engaged by the city magistrate in Keiser's absence. Between 1721 and 1727, Keiser traveled back and forth between Hamburg and Copenhagen, receiving the title of Master of the Danish Royal Chapel. thumb|Oper am Gänsemarkt.

After the dissolution of the opera troop, Keiser returned once more to Hamburg, but changes in its modus operandi made repeating past success difficult. Three operas from the period between 1722 and 1734 survive. Personal relations with Telemann remained good, with Telemann programming several productions of Keiser's operas.

In 1728 he became the St. Mary's Cathedral precentor of Hamburg, and wrote largely church music there until his death in 1739.

Major operas

Oratorios

Now attributed to Friedrich Nicolaus Brauns (1637-1718)

References

External links

Category:Baroque composers Category:German composers Category:Hamburg musicians Category:Opera composers Category:1674 births Category:1739 deaths