#composers meme

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Farinelli’s composers: L E O N A R D O   V I N C I  (1690 or 1696 -1730)

Leonardo Vinci was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. His music exerted a direct influence on many composers of the next generation, notably Pergolesi and Hasse, and also made an impact on older composers such as Vivaldi and Handel, whose later works incorporate elements of the style of Vinci and his colleagues. He was the first composer of international repute to cultivate the periodic treatment of melody.

Vinci entered the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo in Naples in 1708 as a convittore, paying 36 ducats a year, but after three years this fee was waived; apparently he was by then earning his keep as a mastricello or student teacher. After ten years of study he left and for a short time served as maestro di cappella to Prince Sansevero. Vinci made his operatic début in 1719 at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples with the commedia per musica Lo cecato fauzo, enthusiastically reviewed in the Avvisi di Napoli. Vinci’s first operas were of the commedia per musica type, full-length comic operas with texts primarily in Neapolitan dialect. His Li zite’ngalera, from carnival 1722, is the earliest surviving score of a Neapolitan commedia. Vinci produced his first serious opera, Publio Cornelio Scipione, at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples in November 1722; it was so successful that he turned primarily to the dramma per musica. In 1724 Vinci secured his first commission outside Naples, setting Lucchini’s Farnace for the Teatro delle Dame in Rome. Roman theatres were closed for the Holy Year in 1725, but Vinci wrote two new operas for the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice that year; their success probably led to a commission for a new opera at Parma in the spring involving the same composer and principals. Vinci’s activity reached a peak during winter 1725-26 when three new operas were produced: Astianatte in Naples in December, Didone abbandonata in Rome in January and Siroe re di Persia in Venice in February. The last two were the first of a series of successful collaborations between Vinci and Metastasio. Vinci’s success seems to have been challenged by his older colleague Porpora. Productions of operas by the two men in Venice and Rome fuelled a rivalry which, according to Burney, dated back to their youth. During the 1729-30 season Vinci was one of the impresarios at the Teatro delle Dame, as well as its principal composer. In the latter capacity he collaborated with Metastasio on three major works: the serenata La contesa de numi, and the operas Alessandro nell’Indie and Artaserse at the Teatro delle Dame. During the same season Porpora presented two operas at the Teatro Capranica in Rome; according to Marpurg, Vinci, fearful of Porpora’s challenge, resorted to sabotage in an attempt to crush his rival. Vinci’s machinations were hardly necessary, as both his operas became celebrated examples of the dramma per musica.

According to De Brosses, the Italians “did not want to see again any piece that they have already seen another year, unless it is some excellent opera by Vinci”. Vinci did not live to enjoy his success. He died in Naples amid rumours that he had been poisoned because of an illicit love affair.

Vo solcando un mar crudele  (Artaserse)

Cervo in bosco  (Medo)

Taci, o di morte  (Medo)

La rondinella che a noi sen riede  (Partenope)

Confusa, smarrita  (Catone in Utica) 

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Farinelli’s composers: FRANCESCO MARIA VERACINI (1690-1768)

Francesco Maria Veracini was an Italian composer and violinist, perhaps best known for his sets of violin sonatas. Veracini was born into a family of musicians and artists. His grandfather, Francesco (di Niccolò) Veracini was one of the first violinists of Florence, while his uncle  Antonio Veracini was that and a fine composer as well. Francesco Maria’s father Agostino was, ironically, one of the few Veracinis who did not play the violin even as an amateur; he was a druggist and undertaker. Veracini’s early training was provided by his uncle Antonio with whom the promising boy often performed in public.

Veracini left Florence before Easter 1711. Later that year he was a soloist at the Christmas masses at San Marco in Venice, but was never a regular member of the chapel orchestra. During 1714 Veracini appeared in a series of benefit concerts, and as soloist between the acts of operas, at the Queens Theatre in London. In 1716 he was again in Venice, where he dedicated a set of 12 solo sonatas to Prince Elector Friedrich August of Saxony, who came to celebrate carnaval. The Prince recruited not only singers, as he was told to do by his father, but also musicians for the court in Dresden. He hired an entire opera company with the castrati Senesino and Matteo Berselli. In 1718 the Prince also secured - at a very high salary - the services of Francesco Maria Veracini. He remained in Dresden until 1722, when on August 13 he leapt from a third-storey window in a fit of madness brought on by too much application to music and reading of alchemy, according to Mattheson. Veracini’s treatise hints that there was a plot against his life inspired by jealousy, however. In 1722, the arrogant Veracini was involved in a quarrel, staged probably by the composer and violinist Pisendel, which resulted in Veracini not coming out of his room for several days. Out of shame and despair, he finally publicly threw himself out of a window onto the street in Dresden. breaking his leg and hip. After the incident Veracini walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Back in his native Florence in 1723, Veracini played music in a church. During this time he suffered from his bad reputation and was said by Charles Burney to have been "usually qualified with the title of Capo pazzo" ["head lunatic]. That he re-established his reputation as a performer on his return to Italy we learn from Burney’s amusing story in which Veracini arrogantly showed Girolamo Laurenti “the way to play the first fiddle”. Back in London in 1733, Veracini appeared in many concerts. Perhaps he began immediately to play for the Opera of the Nobility, which presented his first opera, Adriano in Siria on 26 November 1735, with the composer leading and playing, and Francesca Cuzzoni, Antonio Montagnana, Farinelli and Senesino in leading roles. His other operas were La Clemenza di Tito, on a libretto based on Metastasio, and Partenio. There being no opera in London for the season of 1738/39, Veracini returned briefly to Florence where his uncle, wife and mother had died in his absence. Back in London he composed his last opera, Roselinda, based on Shakespeare's play As You Like It, a most unusual choice of material at that time. Burney scorned the music of Roselinda as "wild, awkward, and unpleasant". Veracini left London a little more than a year later. In 1745 or shortly after, he survived a shipwreck in which he lost two of his Stainer violins (the ones he called St. Peter and St. Paul), and all of his effects.

He returned to Florence, where he focused on church music. A parish priest who knew him characterized Veracini as one who left several good positions because he valued independence more than wealth. The reports of diarists and journalists reveal him as an eccentric and at times even a seeming madman. Hints of all these traits can be found in his treatise, Il trionfo della pratica musicale, which he wrote during his last years in Florence. Burney remarked that by travelling all over Europe he formed a style of playing peculiar to himself. The asteroid 10875 Veracini was named after him.

Sonate Accademiche No. 12

Prendi o cara  Adriano in Siria

Amor Dover Rispetto  Adriano in Siria

Meco Verrai Su Quella  Rosalinda

Largo

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Farinelli’s composers: D O M E N I C O   S C A R L A T T I  (1685-1757)

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style and he was one of the few Baroque composers to transition into the classical period. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas. Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples, belonging to Spanish Crown, in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. He was the sixth of ten children of the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti. He never used his first Christian name (which could have led to confusion with his nephew Giuseppe): his name is always given in Italy as Domenico (or the familiar Mimo) Scarlatti, and in Portugal and Spain as Domingo Escarlate (Escarlati or Escarlatti).

He probably first studied music under his father. Other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom may have influenced his musical style. He was appointed as composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples in 1701. In 1704, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera Irene for performance at Naples. Soon afterwards, his father sent him to Venice. After this, nothing is known of Scarlatti's life until 1709, when he went to Rome in the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire. Scarlatti was already an eminent harpsichordist: there is a story of a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome where he was judged possibly superior to Handel on that instrument, although inferior on the organ. Later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill. In Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimire's private theatre. He was Maestro Di Cappella at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to direct his opera Narciso at the King's Theatre. According to Vicente Bicchi (Papal Nuncio at the time), Domenico Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara. He left Lisbon on 28 January 1727 for Rome, where he married Maria Caterina Gentili on 6 May 1728. In 1729 he moved to Seville, staying for four years. In 1733 he went to Madrid as music master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house and later became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in the country for the remaining twenty-five years of his life, and had five children there. After the death of his first wife in 1742, he married a Spaniard, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were a number of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known.

Scarlatti befriended the castrato singer Farinelli, a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage in Madrid. The musicologist and harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick commented that Farinelli's correspondence provides "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day". Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, at the age of 71. His residence on Calle Leganitos is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid. He was buried at a convent there, in Madrid, but his grave no longer exists.

Fandango

Sonata K 99

Se l'alma non t'adora  L'Ottavia ristituita al trono

Sonata K 89 for Viola d'Amore & Cembalo  

Sonata in G minor, K. 108

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Bird Bachs (2018)

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had to do it to him

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