Year 1728 (MDCCXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.
Marin Marais (31 May 1656, Paris – 15 August 1728, Paris) was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for 6 months. He was hired as a musician in 1676 to the royal court of Versailles. He did quite well as court musician, and in 1679 was appointed "ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole", a title he kept until 1725.
He was a master of the basse de viol, and the leading French composer of music for the instrument. He wrote five books of 'Pièces de viole' (1686-1725) for the instrument, generally suites with basso continuo. These were quite popular in the court, and for these he was remembered in later years as he who "founded and firmly established the empire of the viol" (Hubert Le Blanc, 1740). His other works include a book of Pièces en trio (1692) and four operas (1693-1709), Alcyone (1706) being noted for its tempest scene.
Titon du Tillet included Marais in Le Parnasse françois, making the following comments on two of his pieces, Le Labyrinthe, perhaps inspired by the labyrinth of Versailles, and La Gamme:
Agostino Steffani (25 July 1654 – 12 February 1728) was an Italian ecclesiastic, diplomat and composer.
Steffani was born at Castelfranco Veneto. At a very early age he was admitted as a chorister at San Marco, Venice. In 1667 the beauty of his voice attracted the attention of Count Georg Ignaz von Tattenbach, by whom he was taken to Munich, where his education was completed at the expense of Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, who appointed him Churfürstlicher Kammer- und Hofmusikus and granted him a liberal salary. After receiving instruction from Johann Kaspar Kerll, in whose charge he lived, he was sent in 1673 to study in Rome, where Ercole Bernabei was his master, and among other works he composed six motets, the original manuscripts of which are now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.
On his return to Munich in 1674 he published his first work, Psalmodia vespertina, a part of which was reprinted in Giovanni Battista Martini's Saggio di contrappunto in 1774. In 1675 he was appointed court organist. The date when he was ordained priest, with the title of Abbate of Lepsing, is not precisely known. His ecclesiastical status did not prevent him from turning his attention to the stage, for which, at different periods of his life, he composed work which undoubtedly exercised a potent influence upon the dramatic music of the period. Of his first opera, Marco Aurelio, written for the carnival and produced at Munich in 1681, the only copy known to exist is a manuscript score preserved in the royal library at Buckingham Palace. It was followed by Solone in 1685, by Audacia e rispetto, Prerogative d'amore and Servio Tullio in 1686, by Alarico in 1687, and by Niobe, regina di Tebe in 1688.
Johann Joseph Fux (German pronunciation: [ˈfʊks]) (1660 – 13 February 1741) was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. He is most famous as the author of Gradus ad Parnassum, a treatise on counterpoint, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrina style of Renaissance polyphony. Almost all modern courses on Renaissance counterpoint, a mainstay of college music curricula, are indebted in some degree to this work by Fux.
Fux was born to a peasant family in Hirtenfeld in Styria. Relatively little is known about his early life, but likely he went to nearby Graz for music lessons. In 1680 he was accepted at the Jesuit university there, where his musical talent became apparent. From 1685 until 1688 he served as organist at St. Moritz in Ingolstadt. Sometime during this period he must have made a trip to Italy, as evidenced by the strong influence of Corelli and Bolognese composers on his work of the time.
By the 1690s he was in Vienna, and attracted the attention of Emperor Leopold I with some masses he composed; the emperor was sufficiently impressed by them to assist him with his career after this point. In 1698, Leopold hired him as court composer. Fux traveled again to Italy, studying in Rome in 1700; it may have been here that acquired the veneration for Palestrina which was so consequential for music pedagogy.
Sophie Watillon (7 December 1965 – 31 August 2005) was born in Namur, Belgium to a musical family. During her young life, the viola da gamba-soloist gained international fame with refined and sensitive solo interpretations of Early Music and Baroque compositions for viola da gamba.
At the age of sixteen, she began studying music with Philippe Pierlot in Maastricht, and then further with Wieland Kuijken in Brussels and with Paolo Pandolfo at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel.
Beside her solo career, Watillon was a permanent member of Hesperion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations of Jordi Savall. She played with various ensembles such as Il Seminario Musicale, Cantus Cölln, Le Poème Harmonique, Ricercar Consort, Stylus Phantasticus.
(labels: Alpha - Summit records - Ligia Digital - Ricercar - Cyprès)
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury