Baldassare Galuppi (1706 – 1785) was a Venetian
composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian
Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers,
including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista
Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are
emblematic of the prevailing galant music that
developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He
achieved international success, spending periods of his
career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his
main base remained Venice, where he h...(+)
Baldassare Galuppi (1706 – 1785) was a Venetian
composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian
Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers,
including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista
Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are
emblematic of the prevailing galant music that
developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He
achieved international success, spending periods of his
career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his
main base remained Venice, where he held a succession
of leading appointments.
In his early career Galuppi made a modest success in
opera seria, but from the 1740s, together with the
playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni, he became
famous throughout Europe for his comic operas in the
new dramma giocoso style. To the succeeding generation
of composers, he was known as "the father of comic
opera". Some of his mature opere serie, for which his
librettists included the poet and dramatist Metastasio,
were also widely popular.
Throughout his career Galuppi held official positions
with charitable and religious institutions in Venice,
the most prestigious of which was maestro di cappella
at the Doge's chapel, St Mark's Basilica. In these
various capacities he composed a large amount of sacred
music. He was also highly regarded as a virtuoso
performer on and composer for keyboard instruments.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Galuppi's music
was largely forgotten outside of Italy, and Napoleon's
invasion of Venice in 1797 resulted in Galuppi's
manuscripts being scattered around Western Europe, and
in many cases, destroyed or lost. Galuppi's name
persists in the English poet Robert Browning's 1855
poem "A Toccata of Galuppi's", but this has not helped
maintain the composer's work in the general repertoire.
Some of Galuppi's works were occasionally performed in
the 200 years after his death, but it was not until the
last years of the 20th century that his compositions
were extensively revived in live performance and on
recordings.
Galuppi was much admired for his keyboard music. Few of
his sonatas were published in his lifetime, but many
survive in manuscript. Some of them follow the
Scarlatti single-movement model; others are in the
three-movement form later adopted by Haydn, Beethoven
and others.
Galuppi's skill as keyboard player is well documented.
Hillers Wöchentliche Nachrichten in 1772 made this
mention of Galuppi's reputation in Saint Petersburg:
"Chamber concerts were held every Wednesday in the
antechamber of the imperial apartments, in order to
enjoy the special style and fiery accuracy of the
clavier playing of this great artist; thus did the
virtuoso earn the overall approval of the court." It is
no surprise that a number of Galuppi's keyboard works
should make it into print during his lifetime,
including two sets of 6 sonatas, published in London as
opus 1 (1756) and opus 2 (1759) respectively. Felix
Raabe mentions the round number of 125 "sonatas,
toccatas, divertimenti and etudes" for keyboard, based
on Fausto Torrefranca's 1909 thematic catalogue of
Galuppi's cembalo works. However, given some of the
outrageous assertions on this topic that Torrefranca
makes elsewhere (such as the claim that classical
sonata form was created by Italian keyboard composers)
the accuracy of this figure must be accepted only
cautiously.
Galuppi's 7 experimental Concerti a quattro are
particularly innovative chamber music pieces that
foreshadow the development of the classical string
quartet. Each of the concerti is a three-movement work
for two violins, viola and cello that integrates the
counterpoint of the sonata da chiesa with daring
chromatic twists and harmonic detours that become more
pronounced as the set progresses quartet by quartet.
Innovations such as the chromatically raised 5th that
Burney singled out in Galuppi's arias of the 1740s
appear, and many harmonic features of the
late-classical period are foreshadowed, such as the
final deceptive cadence in which an augmented sixth
chord is substituted before the ultimate resolution.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldassare_Galuppi).
Although originally composed for Keyboard
(Harpsichord), I created this Interpretation of the
Sonata III in A Minor (Illy No. 43) for String Quartet
(2 Violins, Viola & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC