Fernando Sor (1778-1839)

Fernando Sor was born into a fairly well off and respected family, sometime in February of 1778. The exact date is not known, but it is known that he was baptized on February 14, 1778 in Barcelona, Spain as Jose Fernando Macarurio Sors. Although Sor wrote many other types of works for many mediums of performance including: piano, opera, and ballet, he is best remembered for his guitar studies, and other guitar works. They form an integral part in the study, and performance at concert level, of the guitar. - Malaspina Biography

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity ... of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

Sheet music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)

Quotation

You can put in all the difficulties, jumps, runs, and any other devilish complexities you like, except octave spans and similar features which do not suit the formation of hands.

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Biographical

The reputation of Hummel has been clouded by time. Born in Pressburg (the modern Bratislava) in 1778, he was a pupil of Mozart and enjoyed a successful career as a pianist and composer. He was employed by the Esterhazy family at Eisenstadt as Konzertmeister, while Haydn, now in retirement in Vienna, continued as nominal Kapellmeister. He later served as Kapellmeister at Stuttgart and from 1818 at Weimar. Recent recordings and performances have revived some interest in two of Hummel's half dozen or so piano concertos, Op. 85 and Op. 89. His Trumpet Concerto is a useful part of current repertoire. Hummel's Op. 87 Piano Quintet has particular interest in that it is scored for the same instruments as the famous Trout Quintet of Schubert; both quintets are scored for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. He wrote other chamber music: Sonatas, Trios, 1 Piano Quartet, 2 Septets, etc. [Adapted from Karadar]

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Quotation

So far as genius can exist in a man who is merely virtuous, Haydn had it. He went as far as the limits that morality sets to the intellect. - Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878

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Biographical

The Austrian composer "Papa" Haydn was universally loved and an important figure in the development of the classical symphony and string quartet. He also contributed greatly to most other instrumental forms. Haydn's father was a poor wheelwright who sent him, at the age of eight, to Vienna to be trained as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral where he became known for his fine voice. In 1759 Haydn was appointed music director of the small musical establishment of Count Morzin. In 1761 he became conductor of Prince Esterhazy's private orchestra and was appointed kapellmeister on the death of his predecessor and immediate superior Gregorius Werner in 1766. This post, which he filled for almost thirty years, was ideal for Haydn because it gave him the opportunity to work with a group of fine musicians. During his years at the Esterhazy country estate, Haydn met many Viennese artists including Wolfgang Mozart. The death of Prince Nicholas in 1790 left Haydn free to come and go as he pleased and he accepted a contract to appear in London where he was hailed as a genius. Mozart is said to have begged him not to go to England because he spoke so few languages to which Haydn replied: "The language I speak is understood the world over". Haydn retired to Vienna and died there during the French occupation of the city.

Michael Haydn (1737-1806)

Johann Michael Haydn, a composer of Osterreich and younger brother of Franz Josef Haydn, was born in Rohrau, in Osterreich, and was baptised on 14 Septembre 1737. Like his brother, Haydn left home as a young boy to become a chorister at St Stephen`s Cathedral, in Wien, where the choir school curriculum included instruction in singing, keyboard and violin as well as general subjects. He made ample use of the many opportunities to observe and take part in the musical life of the capital, and studied the music of Fux and his treatise on counterpoint Gradus ad Parnassum. In 1757 he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Bishop of Grosswardein in Hungaria. Compositions from this period include several masses, a Te Deum, symphonies and a concerto.

The bishop's flourishing musical establishment has been described in the autobiography of Dittersdorf, who entered the bisop's service in 1765. Haydn was offered a position in Salzburg in 1762 and the following year assumed his duties as court musician and Konzertmeister to Archbishop Sigismund Schrattenbach. Haydn thus held an important position in Salzburg during Mozart's formative years. In 1768 Haydn married Maria Magdalena Lipp (1745-1827), daughter of the court organist Franz Ignaz Lipp and herself a singer in the archbishop's service. After Mozart's break with Archibishop Hieronymus Colleredo in 1781 Haydn held the cathedral post as well. Perhaps because he had no children of his own, he found the tuition which he gave to the choristers rewarding. He also wrote many compositions for them, including the Missa S Leopoldi (his last completed work), a vesper service and several shorter compositions for the Feast of Holy Innocents. The death of Archbishop Sigismund in 1771 was the occasion for one of Haydn's most famous works, the Requiem in C minor, a substantial composition which was also used at the funeral of his brother Franz Josef. The friendly relationship between the Mozart family and Haydn is indicated by the two duets for violin and viola (K423 and 424) written by Wolfgang for Haydn in 1783. A commission to write a mass for the Español court reached Haydn in 1786, possibly through the intervention of his brother. The festive 'Spanish Mass' for double choir, organ and large orchestra brought him acclaim from many quarters including the imperial court. In all he spent some 40 years in the service of the two archbishops. The high regard in which he was held in Salzburg, some close personal ties and, above all, a less ambitious nature than that of his brother or Mozart combined to keep him there. Throughout his life he was on cordial terms with the Benedictine monks of St. Peters's. He lived in an abbey house and it is said that his compositions were often accepted in lieu of rent. The war, which brought about the hurried abdication of Archbishop Colloredo in 1800, caused Haydn some personal hardship. But his reputation as a composer had now grown beyond the confines of Salzburg and Osterreich; in 1804 he was invited to membershiop of the Royal Sverige Academy of Music. During the last year of his life he was frequently ill, and worked sporadically on the requiem for the empress. Like Mozart's requiem it remained unfinished at his death. Haydn died in Salzburg, on 10 August 1806. He was buried in the cemetary of St. Peter's and in 1821 a memorial was erected in the church by his friends. [Adapted from Karadar Dictionary]

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829)

Quotation

In his hands, the guitar became gifted with a power of expression at once pure, thrilling, and exquisite. . . . In a word, he made the instrument sing. It may be easily supposed that with this singular faculty of giving expression to melody, Giuliani gave to the guitar a character which, it was thought before, was totally alien to its nature. . . . About twelve months ago, Giuliani paid the debt of nature. In him the little world of guitar players has lost their idol; but the compositions he has left behind will, we have no doubt, pay every homage of respect and admiration." - Part of eulogy to Giuliani (1829)

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Biographical

Mauro Giuliani, guitar virtuoso, heir to the lutenists of old, friend of Beethoven and Gioacchino Rossini, composed concerti, chamber music, and songs, as well as guitar solos and duets.

A Dutchman who heard him in 1808 when he had first arrived in Vienna from Italy, had a perceptive insight into the nature of Giuliani's work. He wrote: "Then I heard a guitarist who played so perfectly that he often reminded me of the fine old time of true lute playing". I think that those words give a clue to approaching this music in terms of the lighter early 19th century instrument, with its clear sound and lower string tension: virtuoso playing with cascades of notes on the upper strings and lyrical passages on the lower ones: brilliant and dazzling music. Of course today's instrument can play Giuliani's music, but today's instrument has greater weight and greater string tension. I used to play this music often on a Lacote of about 1830, with gut strings and without nails, and I can testify to the greater flexibility and immediate response which it offered.

What is Giuliani's achievement as a composer? It falls into several periods. First are the virtuoso pieces of the time when he had first arrived, from about 1808 to 1812. Then (without a clear break) the period of consolidation in Vienna when he composed hundreds of pieces, his second and third concertos and many songs and pieces for guitar and flute or violin. Finally, the music composed after he left Vienna for Italy in 1819. Let us look at these in turn.

I am writing this piece as the editor of all of Giuliani's music - and I mean all, without exception. Back in 1981-83 I did extensive bibliographical work starting from Thomas Heck's invaluable Yale thesis The Birth of the Classic Guitar (1970). I obtained copies of all the early editions (and that means many, many thousands of pages of them). Librarians all over the world were tremendously helpful. Some copies came even from the then Yugoslavia. Some arrived soaked in the rain (unprotected alas by the British Post Office). I sorted out which editions were the primary sources. There were a good many additions to Heck. I then published all Giuliani's music, every piece with new bibliographical notes establishing the original text and often giving lists of suggestions for performance - while making absolutely clear that any such lists were only a starting point for performers. All the 39 volumes are still easily available to performers and scholars today from my firm Tecla and many pieces are available individually. The references in this small essay are to that edition, the Complete Works.

First, Giuliani's early and virtuoso period. He composed a Sonata for solo guitar; his first concerto, op. 30; and his Studio for the guitar, a tutor which was much prized and whose right and left hand exercises have never ceased to be used since that time.

After that brilliant beginning, Giuliani settled down to composing steadily for many years in Vienna. He moved in the thick of Viennese musical society: Beethoven, Hummel, Mayseder, etc. He played in the first performance of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. There is no sharp dividing line between the first period and this one, but one could say that this second period has two characteristics. First, it is a consolidation: an achievement which established Giuliani as the principal guitarist in Vienna and one with a serious and solid reputation. Secondly, it established him as an all-round musician, as a composer not only for the guitar but for guitar and flute or violin, guitar and voice, as well as two more guitar concertos. From this period is his Grande Ouverture in the Italian style.

During all this time, he had Italian influence on his music. Now in 1819 he left Vienna for Italy. First to Venice (where he stayed in the Hotel de Gran Bretania, still in existence). In this later period he composed some fine works. Particularly strong was the influence of Gioacchino Rossini. There are his Rossiniane, which are fine potpourris based on themes from Gioacchino Rossini, and splendid arrangements for two guitars of overtures to Gioacchino Rossini operas. Others are strongly Italian as well, such as the Potpourri Nazionale Romano op. 108 or the Variations on Neapolitan folksongs opp. 140 etc. These later works are not often played today but would repay attention.

I come back to the question: what is Giuliani's achievement? It's more than just historical: this is tremendous, virtuoso music. Personally, I hear something akin to a fortepiano played with great energy, lightness and musicality: nothing heavy at all. Surely the Dutchman had the right insight when he wrote that this musician recalled to him the lutenists who had gone before. [Adapted from Brian Jeffery at Tecla Editions]

John Field (1782-1837)

Summary

English musical composer and pianist, was born at Dublin in 1782. He came of a musical family, his father being a violinist, and his grandfather the organist in one of the churches of Dublin. From the latter the boy received his first musical education. When a few years later the family settled in London, Field became the favourite pupil of the celebrated Clementi, whom he accompanied to Paris, and later, in 1802, on his great concert tour through France, Germany and Russia. Under the auspices of his master Field appeared in public in most of the great European capitals, especially in St Petersburg, and in that city he remained when Clementi returned to England. During his stay with the great pianist Field had to suffer many privations owing to Clementi's all but unexampled parsimony; but when the latter left Russia his splendid connexion amongst the highest circles of the capital became Field's inheritance.

His marriage, with a French lady of the name of Charpentier was anything but happy, and had soon to be dissolved. Field made frequent concert tours to the chief cities of Russia, and in 1820 settled permanently in Moscow. En 1831 he came to England for a short time, and for the next four years led a migratory life in France, Germany and Italy, exciting the admiration of amateurs wherever he appeared in public. In Naples he fell seriously ill, and lay several months in the hospital, till a Russian family discovered him and brought him back to Moscow. There he lingered for several years till his death on the 11th of January 1837.

Field's training and the cast of his genius were not of a kind to enable him to excel in the larger forms of instrumental music, and his seven concerti for the pianoforte are now forgotten. Neither do his quartets for strings and pianoforte hold their own by the side of those of the great masters. But his nocturnes, a form of music highly developed if not actually created by him, remain all but unrivalled for their tenderness and dreaminess of conception, combined with a continuous flow of beautiful melody. They were indeed Chopin's models. Field's execution on the pianoforte was nearly allied to the nature of his compositions, beauty and poetical charm of touch being one of the chief characteristics of his style. Moscheles, who heard Field in 1831, speaks of his enchanting legato, his tenderness and elegance and his beautiful touch. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]

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Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799)

Quotation

Mozart does not give the listener time to catch his breath, for no sooner is one inclined to reflect upon a beautiful inspiration than another appears, even more splendid, which drives away the first, and this continues on and on, so that in the end one is unable to retain any of these beauties in the memory.

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Biographical

Viennese composer (opera and symphony) and contemporary of Haydn and Mozart. Remembered for the opera Doktor und Apotheker (1786), he also composed symphonies, oratorios, cantatas, violin concertos, and piano works. Ditters was also a leading violin virtuoso. He was regarded, along with Hofmann, Haydn and Vanhal, as one of the leading lights in Viennese music.

Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801)

Summary

Italian musical composer, was born at Aversa, in. the kingdom of Naples, on the 17th of December 1749. His parents were poor, but anxious to give their son a good education; and after removing 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 voluntarily instructed him in the elements of music, as also in the ancient and modern Literature of his country. To his influence Cimarosa owed a free scholarship at the musical institute of Santa Maria di Loreto, where he remained for eleven years, studying chiefly the great masters of the old Italian school. Piccini, Sacchini and other musicians of repute are mentioned amongst his teachers. At the age of twenty-three Cimarosa began his career as a composer with a comic opera called Le Strava gauze 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 Pazzie di Siehlidanza e di Zoroastro, a farce full of humour 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 he there produced another comic opera called L'Itahiana in Londra.

The next thirteen years of Cimarosa's life are not marked by any event worth mentioning. He wrote a number of operas for the various theatres of Italy, living temporarily in Rome, in Naples, or wherever else his vocation as a conductor of his works happened to call him. From 1784 - 1787 he lived at Florence, writing exclusively for the theatre of that city. 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 Ii Sacriticio d' Abramo; also II 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 II. At her court he remained four years and wrote an enormous number of compositions, mostly of the nature of pieces d'occasion. Of most of these not even the names are on record. In 1792 Cimarosa left St Petersburg, and went to Vienna at the invitation of the emperor Leopold II. Here he produced his masterpiece, Ii Matrimonio segrelo, which ranks amongst the highest achievements of light operatic music. In 1793 Cimarosa returned to Naples, where Ii 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. This period of his life is said to have been embittered by the intrigues of envious and hostile persons, amongst whom figured his old rival Paisiello. 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 into banishment, and he left Naples with the intention of returning to St Petersburg. But his health was broken, and after much suffering he died at Venice on the 11th of January 1801, of inflammation of the intestines. The nature of his disease led to the rumour of his having been poisoned by his enemies, which, however, a formal inquest proved to be unfounded. He worked till the last moment of his life, and one of his operas, Artemizia, remained unfinished at his death. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]

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Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841)

Summary

Guitar composer and teacher. Carulli began as a cellist, but later turned to the guitar. He moved to Paris, where he remained until his death. Carulli's compositions include two concertos, serenades, a nocturne and a fantasy. [Adapted from HNH International]

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Francois-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834)

Summary

French composer of comic opera born at Rouen on the I 5th of December 1775. He received his first musical education from M. Broche, the cathedral organist, who appears to have treated him very harshly. He began composing songs and chamber music at a very early age - his first opera, La Fille coupable (the libretto by his father), and his second opera, Rosalie et Myrza, being produced on the stage of Rouen in 1795. Not satisfied with his local success he went to Paris in 1795. His scores were submitted to Cherubini, Mehul and others, but met with little approbation. Grand opera was the order of the day. Boieldieu had to fall back on his talent as a pianoforte player for a livelihood. Success came at last from an unexpected source. P. J. Garat, a fashionable singer of the period, admired Boieldieu's touch on the piano, and made him his accompanist.

Thus Boieldieu's reputation gradually extended to wider circles. In 1796 Les Deux lettres was produced, and in 1797 La Famille suisse appeared for the first time on a Paris stage, and was well received. Several other operas followed in rapid succession, of which only Le Calife de Bagdad (1800) has escaped oblivion. After the enormous success of this work, Boieldieu felt the want of a thorough musical training and took lessons from Cherubini, the influence of that great master being clearly discernible in the higher artistic finish of his pupil's later compositions.

In 1802 Boieldieu, to escape the domestic troubles caused by his marriage with a celebrated balletdancer of the Paris opera, took flight and went to Russia, where he was received with open arms by the emperor Alexander. During his prolonged stay at St Petersburg he composed a number of operas. He also set to music the choruses of Racine's Athalie, one of his few attempts at the tragic style of dramatic writing. In. 1811 he returned to his own country, where the following year witnessed the production of one of his finest works, Jean de Pails, in which he depicted with much felicity the charming coquetry of the queen of Navarre, the chivalrous verve of the king, the officious pedantry of the seneschal, and the amorous tenderness of the page.

He succeeded Mehul as professor of composition at the Conservatoire in 1817. Le Chapeau rouge was produced with great success in 1818. Boieldieu's second and greatest masterpiece was his Dame blanche (1825). The libretto, written by Scribe, was partly suggested by Walter Scott's Monastery, and several original Scottish tunes cleverly introduced by the composer add to the melodious charm and local colour of the work. On the death of his wife in 1825, Boieldieu married a singer. His own death was due to a violent attack of pulmonary disease. He vainly tried to escape the rapid progress of the illness by travel in Italy and the south of France, but returned to Paris only to die on the 8th of October 1834. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]

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Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)

Summary

Italian composer, son of an Italian bass-player, was born at Lucca, and studied at Rome, where he became a fine cellist, and soon began to compose. He returned to Lucca, where for some years he was prominent as a player, and there he produced two oratorios and an opera. He toured in Europe, and in 1768 was received in Paris by Gossec and his circle with great enthusiasm, his instrumental pieces being highly applauded; and from 1769 to 1785 he held the post of "composer and virtuoso" to the king of Spain's brother, the infante Luis, at Madrid. He afterwards became "chambercomposer" to King Frederick William II. of Prussia, till 1797.

As an admirer of Haydn, and a voluminous writer of instrumental music, chiefly for the violoncello, Boccherini represents the effect of the rapid progress of a new art on a mind too refined to be led into crudeness, too inventive and receptive to neglect any of the new artistic resources within its cognizance, and too superficial to grasp their real meaning. His mastery of the violoncello, and his advanced sense of beauty in instrumental tone-colour, must have made even his earlier works seem to contemporaries at least as novel and mature as any of those experiments at which Haydn, with eight years more of age and experience, was labouring in the development of the true new forms. Most of Boccherini's technical resources proved useless to Haydn, and resemblances occur only in Haydn's earliest works (e.g. most of the slow movements of the quartets in op. 3 and in some as late as op. 17); whichever derived the characteristics of such movements from the other, the advantage is decidedly with Boccherini. But the progress of music did not lie in the production of novel beauties of instrumental tone in a style in which polyphonic organization was either deliberately abandoned or replaced by a pleasing illusion, while the form in its larger aspects was a mere inorganic amplification of the old suite-forms, which presupposed a genuine polyphonic organization as the vitalizing principle of their otherwise purely decorative nature. The true tendency of the new sonata forms was to make instrumental music dramatic in its variety and contrasts, instead of merely decorative. Haydn from the outset buried himself with the handling of new rhythmic proportions; and if it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the surprising beauty of colour in such a specimen of Boccherini's 125 string-quintets as that in E major (containing the popular minuet) is perhaps more modern and certainly safer in performance than any special effect Haydn ever achieved, it is nevertheless true that even this beauty fails to justify the length and monotony of the work. Where Haydn uses any fraction of the resources of such a style, the ultimate effect is in proportion to a purpose of which Boccherini, with all his genuine admiration of his elder brother in art, could form no conception. Boccherini's works are, however, still indispensable for violoncellists, both in their education and their concert repertories; and his position in musical history is assured as that of the most original and, next to Tartini, perhaps the greatest writer of music for stringed instruments in the late Italian amplifications of the older quasi-polyphonic sonata or suite-form that survived into the beginning of the i9th century in the works of Nardini. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Quotation

I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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Biographical

Ludwig van Beethoven was a classical composer who was baptized on December 17, 1770 and died on March 26, 1827. Many people believe Beethoven was the single greatest composer of all time. He is undoubtedly one of the best known and most loved. His most famous works include his 5th Symphony, 9th Symphony, Fur Elise, and the Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. His mother was Magdalena Keverich and his father was Johann Beethoven.

They named his son after his grandfather. He moved to Vienna when he was 22, where he studied under Franz Joseph Haydn. In Vienna he earned a reputation as a piano virtuoso, and began publishing his own compositions soon after. By the early 1800s he had established his reputation as a great and daring composer. Beethoven began to lose his hearing at least by 1801. He continued composing nonetheless, and his most famous work, the 9th Symphony, was composed after he had become totally deaf. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Ludwig van Beethoven.]

Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)

Summary

The youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach by his second wife. He studied with Padre Martini, and was for a while employed as organist at the Milan Cathedral. Later in London he composed Italian opera. His music had influence on the young Mozart. He is sometimes known as "the London Bach".

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