Johann Ernst Galliard

Johann Ernst ( John Ernest ) Galliard (* 1687 in Celle, † 1749 in London) was an oboist, organist and composer.

Life

Galliard was trained as an oboist and was from 1698 a member of the court orchestra in Celle. He also studied composition with Jean Baptiste Farinelli and Agostino Steffani at Hanover. His works are in the succession of Handel and show him to be skillful contrapuntist. Charles Burney said of him, did I never saw more or less correctness originality in any author did I have Examined, of the present century ( in: A General History of Music IV, London 1789).

At 15, he got his first commissioned a composition for Steffani and Farinelli, the music director of the Principality of Hanover. Later he joined the chamber music of Prince George of Denmark, and went after his marriage to Queen Anne to London, where he age of 19 was the successor of the singer and composer Antonio Draghi in 1706. In addition, he served as organist at Somerset House and beyond a time as the composer for the London theaters (1712 and 1736 ). However, his 1712 opera composed Calypso and Telemachus remained largely unsuccessful. 1726, he and others founded the Academy of Ancient Music, who had the care of both vocal and instrumental music of the goal. 1713 he joined Handel's Italian opera as an oboist at, and it is likely that Handel wrote the heavy oboe passages in the aria of Agilea " M'adora l' idol mio" from Teseo for him. In 1742, he also translated Pier Francesco Tosi Opinioni de ' Cantori Antichi e Moderni o sopra il Canto Sieno Osservazioni figurato, an important contemporary treatise on the art of singing, from Italian into English. Also worth mentioning is that he should have been helping Handel at his first visit to London.

Works

Among his early compositions one finds a Te Deum, Jubilate one and three anthems, which were performed at the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's Cathedral on the occasion of military victory celebrations. He also composed cantatas, songs and sonatas for strings and bassoon. 1745 composed Galliard still a piece for 24 bassoons and 4 double basses for a concert at " Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre ," in which he both tragedies " Brutus " and " Julius Caesar " used as choruses.