Giovanni Battista Martini, also known as
Padre Martini (24 April 1706 – 3 August 1784) was an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
musicianA musician is a person who performs or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.* A singer uses his or her voice as an instrument....
.
Biography
Martini was born at
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of northern Italy...
.
His father, Antonio Maria Martini, a violinist, taught him the elements of music and the violin; later he learned singing and
harpsichordA harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
playing from Padre Pradieri, and counterpoint from Antonio Riccieri and Giacomo Antonio Perti. Having received his education in classics from the fathers of the oratory of San Filippo Neri, he afterwards entered upon a noviciate at the Franciscan monastery at Lago, at the close of which he was received as a
Minorite on September 11, 1722.
In 1725, though only nineteen years old, he received the appointment of chapel-master in the
FranciscanThe term Franciscan is commonly used to refer to members of Catholic religious orders, also known as the Orders of Friars Minor, that follow a body of regulations known as "The rule of St. Francis", or a member of one of these orders. As well as Roman Catholic there are also small Old Catholic and...
church at Bologna, where his compositions attracted attention. At the invitation of amateurs and professional friends he opened a school of composition at which several celebrated musicians were trained; as a teacher he consistently declared his preference for the traditions of the old Roman school of composition. Padre Martini was a zealous collector of musical literature, and possessed an extensive musical library.
BurneyCharles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of author Frances Burney.-Biography:Charles Burney was born at Shrewsbury, and educated at Shrewsbury School. He was later sent to the public school at Chester, where his first music master was Edmund Baker, organist of the cathedral,...
estimated it at 17,000 volumes; after Martini's death a portion of it passed to the Imperial library at
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
, the rest remaining in Bologna, now in the
Museo Internazionale della Musica (ex Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale).
Most contemporary musicians speak of Martini with admiration, and
Leopold MozartJohann Georg Leopold Mozart was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of Johann...
consulted him with regard to the talents of his son,
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
.
Abt VoglerGeorg Joseph Vogler, also known as Abbé Vogler , was a German composer, organist, teacher and theorist.Vogler was born at Pleichach in Würzburg...
, however, makes reservations in his praise, condemning his philosophical principles as too much in sympathy with those of Fux, which had already been expressed by P. Vallotti. His
Elogio was published by Pietro della Valle at Bologna in the same year.
In 1758 he was invited to teach at the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna.
Among Martini's pupils: the
BelgianThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
André Ernest Modeste GrétryAndré Ernest Modeste Grétry was acomposer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège , who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques....
, the
BohemianBohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands, currently the Czech Republic...
Josef MyslivečekJosef Mysliveček was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music...
, the
UkrainianUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
/
RussianRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
Maksym BerezovskyMaksym Sozontovych Berezovsky was a Ukrainian composer , opera singer, and violinist. His first name sometimes is transliterated as Maxim....
, the young
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
,
Johann Christian BachJohann Christian Bach was a composer of the Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is sometimes referred to as 'the London Bach' or 'the English Bach', due to his time spent living in the British capital...
and the famous
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
cellist
Giovanni Battista CirriGiovanni Battista Cirri was an Italian cellist and composer in the 18th century.-Biography:Cirri was born in Forlì . He had his first musical training with his brother Ignazio , he was also for a time organist at Forlì Cathedral)...
.
The greater number of Martini's sacred compositions remain unprinted. The Liceo of Bologna possesses the manuscripts of two oratorios; and a requiem, with some other pieces of church music, are now in Vienna.
Litaniae atque antiphonae finales B. V. Mariae were published at Bologna in 1734, as also twelve
Sonate d'intavolalura; six
Sonate per l'organo ed il cembalo in 1747; and
Duetti da camera in 1763. Martini's most important works are his
Storia della musica (Bologna, 1757-1781) and his
Esemplare di contrappunto (Bologna, 1774-1775). The former, of which the three published volumes relate wholly to ancient music, and thus represent a mere fragment of the author's vast plan, exhibits immense reading and industry, but is written in a dry and unattractive style, and is overloaded with matter which cannot be regarded as historical. At the beginning and end of each chapter occur puzzle-canons, wherein the primary part or parts alone are given, and the reader has to discover the canon that fixes the period and the interval at which the response is to enter. Some of these are exceedingly difficult, but Luigi Cherubini solved the whole of them.
The
Esemplare is a learned and valuable work, containing an important collection of examples from the best masters of the old Italian and Spanish schools, with excellent explanatory notes. It treats chiefly of the tonalities of the plain chant, and of counterpoints constructed upon them. Besides being the author of several controversial works, Martini drew up a
Dictionary of Ancient Musical Terms, which appeared in the second volume of GB Doni's Works; he also published a treatise on
The Theory of Numbers as Applied to Music. His celebrated canons, published in London, about 1800, edited by Pio Cianchettini, show him to have had a strong sense of musical humour.
Professor Peter Shickele, in his satirical "study" of the life of the fictitious P.D.Q. Bach has "found" that P.D.Q. Bach's second phase of life, the soused period, was shaped in part by Padre Martini (and further by his association with Thomas Collins).
External links
- More information, including full text, of Martini's Storia della musica in the University of North Texas Music Library's Virtual Rare Book Room
Sources
- Sadie, S. (ed.) (1980) The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, [vol. # 11].
- Elisabetta Pasquini, Gimbattista Martini. Palermo, L'Epos, 2007. ISBN 978-88-8302-343-9