Year 1759 (MDCCLIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). In Great Britain, this year was known as the Annus Mirabilis because of British victories in the Seven Years' War.
George Frideric Handel (German: Georg Friedrich Händel; pronounced [ˈhɛndəl]) (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music. He received critical musical training in Halle, Hamburg and Italy before settling in London (1712) and becoming a naturalised British subject in 1727. By then he was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.
Within fifteen years, Handel, a dramatic genius, started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera, but the public came to hear the vocal bravura of the soloists rather than the music. In 1737 he had a physical breakdown, changed direction creatively and addressed the middle class. As Alexander's Feast (1736) was well received, Handel made a transition to English choral works. After his success with Messiah (1742) he never performed an Italian opera again. Handel was only partly successful with his performances of English Oratorio on mythical and biblical themes, but when he arranged a performance of Messiah to benefit the Foundling Hospital (1750) the critique ended. The pathos of Handel's oratorios is an ethical one. They are hallowed not by liturgical dignity but by the moral ideals of humanity. Almost blind, and having lived in England for almost fifty years, he died a respected and rich man.
Carl Heinrich Graun (7 May 1704 – 8 August 1759) was a German composer and tenor singer. Along with Johann Adolph Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.
Graun was born in Wahrenbrück in Brandenburg. In 1714, he followed his brother, Johann Gottlieb Graun, to the school of the Church of the Cross, Dresden, and sang in the Dresdner Kreuzchor and the chorus of the Dresden Opera. He studied singing with Christian Petzold and composition with Johann Christoph Schmidt. In 1724, Graun moved to Braunschweig, singing at the opera house and writing six operas for the company. In 1735, Graun moved to Rheinsberg in Brandenburg, after he had written the opera Lo specchio della fedeltà for the marriage of the then crown prince Frederick (the Great) and Elisabeth Christine in Schloss Salzdahlum in 1733. He was Kapellmeister to Frederick the Great from his ascension to the throne in 1740 until Graun's death nineteen years later in Berlin.
Graun wrote a number of operas. His opera Cesare e Cleopatra inaugurated the opening of the Berlin State Opera (Königliche Hofoper) in 1742. Montezuma (1755) was written to a libretto by King Frederick. His pieces are rarely played today, though his passion cantata Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus, 1755) was frequently performed in Germany for many years after his death. His other works include concertos and trio sonatas.
Franz Krommer (Czech: František Vincenc Kramář) (November 27, 1759, Kamenice u Jihlavy – January 8, 1831, Vienna) was a Czech composer of classical music, whose seventy-year life began the year of the death of George Frideric Handel and ended a few years after that of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The main events of his life were somewhat as follows:
He may have been Kapellmeister as early as 1814. (This article also shows or at least suggests that Beethoven's opinion towards such music of Krommer's as he heard was poor.)
His output was prolific, with at least three hundred published compositions in at least 110 opus numbers including at least five symphonies, seventy string quartets and many others for winds and strings, about fifteen string quintets ([1]) and much music for winds by themselves and with other instruments, for which he has perhaps become best-known.
Compiled from Library of Congress records (of scores, parts or recordings. Note that some works by Krommer were published with the same Op. number.) also from WorldCat.
Johann Christoph Altnickol, or Altnikol, (1 January 1720 – 25 July 1759; dates of baptism and burial) was a German organist, bass singer, and composer. He was a son-in-law and copyist of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He was born in Berna bei Seidenberg, Oberlausitz, and first educated at the Lauban Lyceum in 1733. He was employed as a singer and assistant organist at St Maria Magdalena, Breslau, between 1740 and 1744. He began studying theology at the University of Leipzig from March 1744, after being granted four thalers as a viaticum in January of that year. From Michaelmas 1745 he sang as a bass in Johann Sebastian Bach's choirs (asserted by Bach in May 1747 when Altnickol claimed a grant of 12 thalers in April/May 1747 for the work), something he should not have been allowed to do as a university student. He was recommended by W. F. Bach as the successor to his post at Dresden in April 1746, with the assertion that he had studied keyboard and composition with his father, but was not awarded the appointment.