Page 40 - Booklet
P. 40
with 10 registers for the Roman institute for girls Conservatorio delle Zitelle di S. Giovanni the left hand. In the second movements, associations might be made with such musical
in Laterano. Franzaroli dedicated an Alma redemptoris mater for two sopranos and genres as the prelude or capriccio. The galant style of De Rossi’s pieces is reminiscent of
basso continuo to this institute. (This piece is preserved in a manuscript copy of Roman the harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757).
th
provenance, dating from the first half of the 19 century and located in the Bavarian State
Library in Munich; see RISM-OPAC). In 1754, Franzaroli was involved in furnishing an expert Lorenzo De Rossi (1720 Rome - 1794 Rome) was a priest, maestro di cappella, singer in
opinion on the organ at Sant’Eustachio in Rome (Rione Sant’Eustachio) that was built Rome, and probably an accomplished performer of keyboard instruments as well. So
in 1747-1749 by Celestino Testa OSB. In 1767 Wörle himself was responsible for a crucial far, no further details are known about his life and works. However, he must have been
rebuilding of this instrument, in a style that is still representative for him today. among the most important musical personalities of his time in Rome, as is indicated
by a manuscript collection containing sonatas by him, housed in the Santini Library in
Giovanni Battista Martini (1706 Bologna - 1784 Bologna), known as Padre Martini, was Münster (see p. 37 above). Copies of his sonatas for harpsichord (organ) are preserved
a Franciscan Friar Minor in Bologna – and also a priest, organist, maestro di cappella, in many European archives, and some vocal pieces for a small number of soloists with
composer, music pedagogue, theoretician, and music historian. He was regarded as the organ or basso continuo accompaniment are also found in Italy. It is not known whether
first authority in questions of contrapuntal composition. Among his many pupils were the English music historian and organist Charles Burney (1726–1814), on the occasion of
such later famous composers as Johann Christian Bach and Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. his visit to Rome in 1770, had met personally with the Abate Rossi Romano or whether he
Martini visited Rome in 1747 and 1753, and it is quite possible that he could have met Wörle had only heard about him from others. Burney wrote as follows in his important book:
there. At the very least, these two musical experts must have known about each other. “The Abate Rossi is reckoned the neatest harpsichord player at Rome [...]. But, to say the
Padre Martini composed mainly sacred works. His six Sonatas for Organ or Harpsichord truth, I have neither met with a great player on the harpsichord, nor an original composer
opus 3 appeared in the year of his first trip to Rome. No. 6 of these sonatas consists of for it throughout Italy*. [footnote:] *It seems as if [Domenico] Alberti was always to be
two contrasting movements in C Major. After the first movement in slow duple meter, pillaged or imitated in every modern harpsichord lesson.” (Charles Burney, The Present
nd
with its distinctive playful figures moving along at a leisurely pace, there follows a faster State of Music in France and Italy [...], 2 rev. ed., London 1773, p. 297f.).
movement in triple meter, with more varied harmonies.
Andrea Basili (1705 Città della Pieve - 1777 Loreto) came from a family of musicians. He was
Also the Sonatas of Lorenzo De Rossi have two movements each, in a slow-fast tempi trained in Rome by Tommaso Bernardo Gaffi (ca. 1665 Rome - 1744 Rome), an accomplished
and in the same key. Each movement is in two sections; in every case, the second part organist, composer and music theoretician. Already in 1729, Basili had taken up the position
begins again with the theme of the first part, but now on the dominant. The motives of Maestro di cappella at the Cathedral in Tivoli, but soon afterwards he was back in Rome.
are combined skillfully with each other. In the first movements, the continuous Alberti He was active here as organist and trombonist at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and in 1732 he
bass is most striking: the melody in the right hand is accompanied by broken chords in became an ensemble member of the “Concerto di cornetti e tromboni di Campidoglio”
38 39