Giuseppe Donizetti

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Giuseppe Donizetti

Giuseppe Donizetti (Turkish mostly Donizetti Paşa , born November 6, 1788 in Bergamo , † February 12, 1856 in Constantinople ) was an Italian composer , conductor and music teacher . As the highest court musician of the Ottoman Empire , he established the tradition of western art music in what is now Turkey.

Life

Giuseppe Donizetti was the older brother of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti . He learned to play the flute from an uncle; after he was denied participation in the Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica in 1806 due to old age, he took private composition lessons with Johann Simon Mayr . From 1809 he worked as a musician in various military bands, including playing on Elba and in Sardinia , and gained a good reputation as a military bandmaster. When the Turkish Sultan Mahmud II was looking for a musician to reorganize his band after the dissolution of the Janissaries and their band, he was made aware of Donizetti by an Italian diplomat. In 1828 Donizetti went to Constantinople as General Music Director of the court for the high fee of 8,000 francs a year.

Here he reformed the palace chapel, first following the example of Western European military bands, by introducing Western instruments such as oboes and clarinets and Western musical notation. His reforms were carried over to other Turkish bands. In 1831 his influence led to the founding of the first music school in the Ottoman Empire based on the Western model, where Donizetti himself taught flute, piano, harmony and instrumentation , but where, in addition to Western subjects, genuine Turkish culture such as Karagöz theater was taught. Donizetti pleaded for an influence of classical Turkish music on the work of his students. The palace chapel eventually became a symphony orchestra in the western sense; it lives on today as the Turkish President's Symphony Orchestra (Cumhurbaşkanlığı Senfoni Orkestrası) in Ankara . In the sultan's harem, Donizetti put on performances of western orchestral music and smaller Italian operas. Mahmud's successor, Abdülmecid I , who ruled from 1839 and played the piano himself, promoted Western culture more than his predecessor, and Western art music became part of the emerging bourgeois urban culture in the Ottoman Empire. Donizetti was awarded the title of Paşa , and in 1842 he was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor . Donizetti is buried in a crypt in the Catholic Holy Spirit Cathedral in Istanbul's Pera district.

Donizetti's importance as a reformer of Ottoman music is greater than that as a composer: he has mainly received occasional works such as marches and the like, including the sultan's hymns for the two rulers under whom he worked. Franz Liszt , who was a guest at Donizetti's invitation at the Ottoman court, composed a concert paraphrase on Donizetti's hymn for Sultan Abdülmecid (Grande Paraphrase de la marche de Giuseppe Donizetti composée pour Sa Majesté le sultan Abdul Medjid-Khan) in 1848 , which he dedicated to the Ottoman ruler.

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Donizetti, Giuseppe . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 3rd part. Typogr.-literar.-artist publishing house. Establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1858, p. 365 ( digitized version ).
  • Hayrettin Akdemir: The new Turkish music, represented in folk song arrangements for polyphonic choir. Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-924423-12-1
  • Francesco Bellotto: Giuseppe Donizetti. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3
  • Emre Aracı: A Levantine life: Giuseppe Donizetti at the Ottoman court. In: The Musical Times , Volume 143, Hove 2002
  • Maurizio Costanza, La Mezzaluna sul filo - La riforma ottomana di Mahmûd II , Marcianum Press, Venezia, 2010 ( cap.IV.7b )
  • Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha: Musical and Historical Trajectories between Italy and Turkey / Giuseppe Donizetti Pascià: Traiettorie musicali e storiche tra Italia e Turchia. Edited by Federico Spinetti. Bergamo, Fondazione Donizetti, 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ information about the Ottoman National Anthems (Engl.)
personal data
SURNAME Donizetti, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Donizetti Paşa (Turkish)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian composer, conductor and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Bergamo
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1856
Place of death Constantinople