Jommelli at 300

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Along with C. P. E. Bach and Christoph Willibald Gluck, there is another composer who was born exactly 300 years ago: Niccolò Jommelli (1714 – 1774). Jommelli was famous in his lifetime for his numerous operas and also wrote a number of oratorios, masses, and other sacred vocal music. While he was the Ober-Kapellmeister in Stuttgart (1754-1768), he attracted top-notch performers and built one of the best orchestras in Europe.

In the RISM database of printed music (A/I: Individual Prints Before 1800) there are 41 records, mainly prints from London and Paris.

In the online database, there are more than 2,600 sources. You will see there are seven digitized manuscripts, all from German libraries.

One of them is “E quando sarà mai,” a solo cantata for soprano and accompaniment. It is from the Royal Private Music Collection in Dresden, which Nina Eichholz reported on in this space earlier this month.

Here is a recording of “Al mio vorace affanno” from this cantata. The Dresden copy was written for performance, and you can see from the digital version how easy it is to read the notes on this centuries-old manuscript. Please begin on p. 3 using the table of contents on the left.

Photo credit:

“Opera Garnier Jomelli” by Joseph-Adolphe-Alexandre Walcher (sculptor, 1810–after 1904). Photo taken by Remi Jouan. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Catégorie: Anniversaires

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