Giuseppe Donizetti

Giuseppe Donizetti (Turkish mostly Donizetti Paşa, born November 6, 1788 in Bergamo, † February 12, 1856 in Constantine Opel ) was an Italian composer, conductor and music educator. As the chief court musician of the Ottoman Empire, he established the tradition of Western art music in the territory of modern Turkey.

Giuseppe Donizetti was the older brother of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti. From an uncle he learned to play the flute; after participating in the Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica, he was denied access due to advanced age in 1806, he took private lessons in composition from Johann Simon Mayr. From 1809 he worked as a musician in various military bands, he played among others on Elba and Sardinia, and earned a reputation as a military bandmaster. When the Turkish Sultan Mahmud II after the dissolution of the Janissaries and their chapel was looking for a musician to reorganize his chapel, he was made aware of Donizetti by an Italian diplomat. 1828 Donizetti went every year for the high salary of 8,000 francs as general music director of the court to Constantinople Opel.

Here he reformed the palace chapel at first, following the example of West European military bands by introducing western instruments like oboes and clarinets and the Western musical notation. His reforms were transferred to other Turkish chapels. In 1831 came through his influence on the founding of the first music school in the Ottoman Empire on the western model, where Donizetti himself flute, piano, harmony and instrumentation taught, but where in addition to western subjects also genuinely Turkish culture as taught, for example Karagöztheater. Donizetti pleaded for an influence also of classical Turkish music on the work of his students. The palace chapel eventually became a symphony orchestra in the Western sense; she now works as Symphony of the Turkish President continued ( Cumhurbaşkanlığı Senfoni Orkestrası ) in Ankara. In the harem of the Sultan organized Donizetti performances of Western orchestral music and smaller Italian opera. The 1839 ruling successor of Mahmud, Abdülmecid I, who played piano, promoted the western culture more than its predecessor, and Western art music was part of an emerging bourgeois urban culture in the Ottoman Empire. Donizetti Pasha was awarded the title of 1842 he was appointed a Knight of the French Legion of Honour. Donizetti was buried in a crypt of the Catholic Holy Ghost Cathedral in Istanbul's Pera.

Donizetti's importance as a reformer of the Ottoman music system is greater than the composer, from whom especially occasional pieces such as marches and the like are preserved, including the Sultan hymns for the two rulers, under which he worked. Franz Liszt, who guested on Donizetti's invitation at the Ottoman court, composed 1848 Concert Paraphrase on Donizetti's anthem for Sultan Abdülmecid ( Grande Paraphrase de la marche de Giuseppe Donizetti composée pour Sa majesté le sultan Abdul Medjid Khan ), which he dedicated to the Ottoman rulers.