Baroque Music - Composers

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Giuseppi Tartini

- (1692-1770).
Italian violinist and composer, born in Pirano, Istria (now Piran, Slovenia). He studied in Assisi and in 1721 was appointed solo violinist and conductor of the orchestra at the Church of Saint Anthony in Padua. In 1728 he founded a violin school in Padua. Tartini is considered one of the great masters of the violin. He is credited with the independent codiscovery of combination tones, called Tartini's tones; he observed that a third note is audible when any two notes are produced steadily. He also developed a style of bowing that is still practiced. Tartini composed about 150 concertos and 100 violin sonatas, of which the best known is the posthumously published Devil's Trill. He wrote several theoretical treatises, including The Principles of Musical Harmony (1767; trans. 1771).

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Marc-Antoine Charpentier

- (1645?-1704).
French composer of operas, masses, and songs, admired for the elegant structure of his compositions. Charpentier was born in Paris and for several years he studied music in Italy, where he was inspired by Italian composer Giacemo Carissimi. Charpentier returned to Paris in the early 1670s, where he worked with French playwrights Molière and Pierre Corneille on music for several theater productions. There was much rivalry and disagreement between Charpentier and Italian-born French composer Jean Baptiste Lully, who, as the official composer to King Louis XIV, dominated music at court, especially in the realm of theatrical and operatic composition. Beginning in 1679, Charpentier composed music for the private masses of the Dauphin (the king's eldest son). In the 1680s he was composer and musical director to the Princess of Guise. In 1698 he was made director of music at the king's private chapel, Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Today the work by Charpentier most often heard is a joyful Te Deum with festive trumpets, probably composed in the early 1690s.

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Giovanni Battista Sammartini

- (1701-75).
Italian composer, one of the earliest composers of symphonies. An organist and choirmaster in his native Milan, he began as a church composer but later produced a great quantity of instrumental music, including 70 symphonies and more than 200 ensemble sonatas. Sammartini's major contribution was the extensive development of thematic material in symphonic form. He was also significant as the teacher of the Austrian composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and as a model for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the German composer Johann Christian Bach, and according to some scholars, for the Austrian Joseph Haydn.

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Pietro Metastasio

- (1698-1782).
Italian poet, whose librettos dominated 18th-century opera. Born in Rome and originally named Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi, he was educated in law and the classics by a wealthy patron and studied music under the Italian opera composer Nicola Porpora. His first libretto, Didone abbandonata (Dido Abandoned, 1724), established his fame in Italy, and in 1730 he went to Vienna as court poet. His 27 librettos were set to music more than 800 times by such composers as W. A. Mozart, the Germans Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Christian Bach, and George Frideric Handel, and the Italians Giovanni Pergolesi, Tommaso Traëtta, and Niccolò Jommelli. With their aristocratic ideals and conflicts of reason and feeling, they were perfectly suited to 18th-century heroic opera. They include Artaserse (1730), Alessandro nell'Indie (1731), and La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus, 1734). His verse was admired for its musicality and faithfulness to speech.

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Francesco Geminiani

- (1687-1762).
One of the leading Italian virtuoso violinist-composers of his time. Born in Lucca, he studied under the Italian violinist-composer Arcangelo Corelli and in 1714 settled in England, establishing a career as a brilliant performer. Of his compositions the best known are his concerti grossi, opus 2 and 3. Through his teaching he transmitted the technique and style of Corelli to later generations. The Art of Playing on the Violin, an invaluable 18th-century treatise on violin playing, was for many years misattributed to Geminiani.

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Alessandra Stradella

- (1642-82).
Italian composer, violinist, and singer, who influenced the format of the aria and who was among the earliest to employ the crescendo (gradual increase in loudness) in instrumental music. He was born in Montefestino and reportedly worked in Venice and Turin. Many details of his life remain unknown. He was apparently murdered by a jealous lover and thus became the hero of three 19th-century operas. His cantatas and oratorios are particularly significant. Stradella also wrote operas, motets, madrigals, and string concertos.

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