Niccolò Jommelli
Niccolò Jommelli, Nicola Jommelli ( born September 10, 1714 Aversa, near Naples; † August 25, 1774 in Naples) was an Italian composer.
Life
Training and initial success
The first music study was Jommelli ( the name is a Neapolitan dialect form of Gemello = Twin ) by a canon named Muzzillo, who led the choir of the Cathedral of Aversa. Muzzillo advised the father to send the talented boys for further training at a famous conservatories to Naples. 1725 Jommelli was included in the Conservatorio San Onofrio, where Ignazio Prota and Francesco Feo were his teachers; In 1728 he transferred to the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini.
In the spring of 1737 Jommellis appeared first stage work, the opera buffa L' errore amoroso, at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples. By 1740 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome successfully listed Ricimero Re dei Goti, he created his first work in the genre of opera seria, which formed from now on the focus of his work. After the premiere of Astianatte the following year on the same stage Jommelli has already been hailed as champions. Nevertheless, he used to stay in Bologna on the occasion of the performance of Ezio to take with Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, the " Oracolo della Musica " again for a few weeks of classes. Only after the prestigious " Accademia Filarmonica " had taken in Bologna him as a member, he felt his talent perfectly safe.
His subsequent career was rapid. Probably the first opera composers, he managed to bring two full-length works on the same day premiere: Merope in Venice and Semiramide riconosciuta in Turin, both on December 26, 1741 to kick off the Carnival season. Even Johann Adolf Hasse was impressed by Jommellis compositions and gave him the position as director of the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice, which he held from 1745 to 1747. The performances of the Passion oratorio La passione di Gesù Cristo during the Holy Week in Rome in 1749 won him the applause of influential Vatican circles. Through the mediation of Cardinal Albani Jommelli received an invitation to the imperial court in Vienna for the immediately subsequent season. Despite the short-term vocation, he succeeded in Vienna perform two new operas ( Achille and Catone in Utica in Sciro ) as well as arrangements of three previous ( Merope, Ezio Didone and abbandonata ).
In papal services
Still in Rome was Jommelli by decree of 20 April 1749 Maestro coadiutore ( Vice-Kapellmeister ) of the Cappella Giulia been appointed at St. Peter's Basilica, where he was to take up his duties on 1 January in 1750. However, he has squandered this appointment and went instead to the performance of opera buffa L' uccellatrice to Venice. Maybe he was hoping to get a job in Vienna after the highly successful Wiener season. The Congregation of Santa Cecilia wanted to then cancel the contract, but Pope Benedict XIV sat down personally for Jommelli one who finally took up his duties on June 14, 1750. His new office was connected with numerous administrative duties, but not filled it out as a musician. As far as the church service, this allowed, Jommelli continued to write operas for the Roman stage.
On the Württemberg court
The offer of the Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg, to come to Stuttgart and to get there as court music director in his services, Jommelli opened a new perspective. After he had tentatively written two new operas for Stuttgart, Fetonte ( first version, not identical with the eponymous work of 1768) and La Clemenza di Tito, Jommelli received by the decree of November 24, 1753 officially his new office, he next for the sixteen years held. His service agreement granted him wide powers that went far beyond the usual for court music skills. In addition, he was allowed to take six weeks vacation each year to travel to Italy and to continue to maintain his local contacts. His duties included the composition of two new operas a year, which should all be on February 11 and on November 4, the birthday or name day Carl Eugen listed.
The Württemberg court ( of his residence in 1764 moved to Ludwigsburg ) experienced under Jommelli and the same time dedicated to him choreographer Jean -Georges Noverre probably the most brilliant period of its cultural history. The effort was driven for the opera productions as their principal means of courtly representation, the Duke on the part of the nobility also brought but the charge of extravagance. In this respect it climax meant the performance of the second version of Fetonte on February 11, 1768 at the 436 extras, including 86 on horseback, crowded the stage of the Ludwigsburg Court Theatre.
Led to Jommellis release from Württemberg services What circumstances, is not fully understood. While he spent the spring of 1769 his holiday in Italy to regulate private matters, should a singer in the court chapel have denounced him to the Duke (which he advanced against his superiors, is not known ). On his return Jommelli learned that Carl Eugen had hired for the next season new singer, which had heard loud contract actually Jommellis own skills. On September 27, 1769 Jommelli submitted his resignation, which was approved, apparently without further formalities. The Duke, however, he remained in touch by letter.
Homecoming and final years
Jommelli settled in the vicinity of Naples, but looking at his career as a composer of operas by no means complete. Of the works that he created in his last years in Italy, but only Armida abbandonata could argue reasonably after initial failure. The opulent, enriched with a French influence style, the Jommelli had perfected in his Stuttgart operas and did not want to give up again, in Italy was not asked. Instead, the works of a new generation of composers dominated the field, which is referred to in the music history as " neuneapolitanische school" and a lighter, more popular style used. One of them, inter alia, include Antonio Sacchini and Josef Myslivecek.
End of 1771 Jommelli suffered a stroke, but still composed cantatas and operas for the Portuguese court, with whom he had negotiated a new contract. The offer of King José I of Portugal, to accept personal in Lisbon, the successor of Davide Perez as Kapellmeister, he had rejected and alternatively obliged to send a fee regularly new compositions "from home " to Lisbon. On August 25, 1774 Jommelli lived in the house by Saverio Mattei at a performance of his last Miserere setting, which was sung by the famous soprano Anna Lucia de Amicis. In the following night, he died of a second stroke.
Jommelli was buried at the instigation of his brother, an Augustinian monk in the crypt of St. Thomas of Villanova in the church of San Agostino degli Scalzi. In 1924 the musicologist Ulisse Prota - Giurleo Jommellis mortal remains in the Cappella Tufarelli patient transfer because the tomb was in poor condition. The exact place of burial preserve the monks to this day silence.
Importance
Jommellis importance lies next to the church music primarily in the field of opera. Although he also wrote comic operas, he is one primarily of the most prominent representatives of the opera seria to the mid-18th century. Even his early operas as Astianatte (a version of Hector and Andromache - episode from Homer's Iliad ) and Caio Mario showing his special talent for tragic situations and passionate emotions to their presentation he ausschöpfte the common musical vocabulary to the limit of what is possible. A hallmark of his operas is the higher than average use of accompagnato recitative, which allowed greater freedom in the use of musical stylistic devices, as they were possible in the closed form of the aria, which was subject to much stricter conventions. The expression of lyrical moods depth Jommelli by delicate melody design, particularly differentiated use of the woodwinds and a shading rich harmonies with frequent changes between major and minor.
At about the same with the Symphony Orchestra of the Mannheim school to Johann Stamitz, he began to work with smooth transitions between different volume levels in the orchestral accompaniment. Already in the score of his Artaserse 1749 (ie before his stay in Germany ) he used the lecture instruction " crescendo il forte ". The gradual rise and fall of a tone was as messa di voce on the basics of Italian bel canto, but his transfer to the orchestral apparatus as a whole was quite a novelty and led to greater flexibility and expressiveness of musical language. The question of a possible interaction between Jommelli and the Mannheim school but is not yet fully understood.
Jommellis Stuttgart operas, of which Fetonte (after the Phaeton legend from Ovid's Metamorphoses ) is considered the most representative, also included on the model of the French " Tragédie lyrique " big chorus and ballet scenes, not least corresponded to the need for representation of the electoral court. Dramatic core situations he created through seamless fusion of orchestral accompaniment to recitative, aria -like solos and choruses to through-composed scene blocks.
The compound of elements of Italian and French opera tradition in Jommellis late works reminiscent at first glance to the reform operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck, why Jommelli was often called the " Italian Gluck ". But while Gluck the formal scheme of the number opera overcame by picked it practically went Jommellis effort only then to extend this scheme to the limit of its capacity. The finale of Fetonte ( 1768) with the mythological world conflagration is, formally speaking, an oversized accompanied recitative (17 pages of score in the output of " monuments German musical art ", Volume 32/33), which opens into a trio with chorus. Most of all he resembles Gluck in unusually heavy for its time expression of the tragic in some of his scenes. Pietro Metastasio, imperial court poet in Vienna and literary leader of the opera seria has Jommelli over a letter expressing his concerns in this respect. Duke Carl Eugen is after the great solo scene of Berenice have even uttered in the 3rd act of Vologeso, he would not cope with it, to listen to this piece a second time.
Jommellis church music, especially his Requiem and the oratorio La passione di Gesù Cristo, were also greatly appreciated. Help yourself, as then usual in Italy, a similar style such as the opera, but make frequent use of contrapuntal writing techniques such as canon and fugue. This used Jommelli also in his late operas, of which it was the other way around, they reminded too much of church music.
Works (selection)
He created 220 stage works, including more than 60 operas. Demetrio (Parma, 1749), Ciro riconosciuto (Venice, 1749), Attilio Regolo (Rome, 1753), L' Olimpiade (Stuttgart, 1761), Demofoonte (Stuttgart, 1764), and Temistocle (Ludwigsburg, 1765 ), La critica, ( Ludwigsburg, 1766 ), La schiava liberata ( Ludwigsburg 1768), Armida abbandonata (Naples, 1770).
His work includes numerous pastiches and serenades, oratorios, cantatas and next 20 measuring hundreds of sacred music and chamber music.