Antonio Capuzzi

Giuseppe Antonio Capuzzi (born August 1, 1755 in Breno , † March 28, 1818 in Bergamo ) was an Italian violinist and composer .

Life

Little is known about Capuzzi's training as a violinist and composer. His multi-faceted talent must have been recognized early on, so that he was sent to Venice to study violin with Antonio Nazari and composition with Ferdinando Bertoni , Kapellmeister of St. Mark's Basilica .

In the music metropolis of Venice, with its many churches, each of which has its own orchestra, operas , ballet and public concerts comparable to the Paris “Concerts spirituels” , Capuzzi's talents were able to develop particularly well. After Capuzzi had established himself as a violin virtuoso in Venice from around 1775, he was appointed concertmaster of the San Samuele , San Benedetto and San Moisè theaters there in 1780 . From 1785 he was a member of the chapel of St. Mark's Basilica, before he was first violinist of the newly opened opera La Fenice from 1792 .

Capuzzi's fame enabled him not only to travel to all the major cities in Italy, but also to stay in Vienna and London (1796). After the occupation of Venice by Napoleon's troops in May 1797 and the resulting political end to the Republic of Venice , Capuzzi's close friend, the teacher and composer Johann Simon Mayr , moved to Bergamo. In 1805 he was also able to persuade Capuzzi to come to Bergamo to appoint him as concertmaster and director of the court orchestra of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore and the orchestra of the Teatro Riccardi. However, Mayr mainly intended to engage Capuzzi as a teacher at the Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica school he had founded , which he finally succeeded in doing. Thanks to teachers like Francesco Salari, Antonio Gonzales and Capuzzi, the Lezioni became one of the most important schools in the country and brought forth artistic personalities like Antonio Piatti, Marco Bonesi, Carlo Antonio Zanetti and Gaetano Donizetti .

Capuzzi stayed in Bergamo and died there as a highly respected violin virtuoso, teacher and composer on March 28, 1818, nine days after suffering a stroke or heart attack in the middle of a concert at Santa Maria Maggiore.

personality

During his lifetime Capuzzi was considered an innovative composer, important teacher and virtuoso instrumentalist, which earned him the name "Orpheus of his time" among Italian musicians. An honorable epithet, as it was also common for Georg Friedrich Handel .

Capuzzi's musical success meant that he received “one call to Russia, another to England”. The offer from Russia came from Catherine the Great , but Capuzzi turned it down - probably out of local ties and love for the audience, which he always "delighted with his playing"

Capuzzi must also have been extremely popular with colleagues, for example a requiem and a cantata Per la morte di Antonio Capuzzi by Simon Mayr have come down to us. Gaetano Donizetti, who was instructed by Mayr in Bergamo in the “ strict church style ”, composed a symphony in D minor per la morte di Capuzzi on the occasion of Capuzzi's death .

Today's reception

Like many of the popular and successful composers of the 18th century who were popular at the time, Capuzzi rarely appears in today's concert programs, which in his case is mainly due to the poor tradition. Regarding the comparison of the past and present effect, Capuzzi is nevertheless a quite striking example of a “forgotten” composer of the 18th century.

Double bass players are familiar with the name Capuzzis from a solo concert , the attribution of which, however, is not undisputed. A reference of the dedicatee Cavaliere Marcantonio Mocenigo to the double bass is also not verifiable. There is only one copy of the work that comes from the estate of the bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti . He bequeathed it to his friend and publisher Vincent Novello , who in turn left the manuscript to the British Museum in 1849 . The second and third movements of the concert are sometimes also played by other low instruments ( trombone , euphonium and tuba ). In addition, Capuzzi's string quintets are occasionally performed.

music

Capuzzi's six string quintets with two violas op. 3, published in print in 1783, enjoyed great success with audiences and musicians. The six quintets are among the most original of Capuzzi's works. They are influenced by comparable compositions by Joseph Haydn and Luigi Boccherini and yet speak their own language, which never denies their Italian origins and which has operatic and cantilever features. The works published as op. 3 seem to anticipate Mozart's late quintets, even though Capuzzi's works, with their way of merging buffon-style and serious stylistic elements, have a character of their own. In Capuzzi's string quintets, however, the inspiration of works such as Haydn's string quartets op. 20 and op. 30 can certainly not be ignored. In fact, it is known that Capuzzi - in addition to some manuscripts by various composing contemporaries - owned scores of works by Haydn.

Works

Capuzzi's compositional work, only a fraction of which has survived, can be divided into three phases:

First creative phase

In the period from 1775 to 1790 Capuzzi wrote mainly chamber music works:

• 18 string quartets (in three groups of six each, of which the first and second consignments were published by Artaria in Vienna in 1780 and 1787, while the second cycle was published by Alessandri e Scattaglia in Venice in 1780)
• 6 string quintets with two violas op.3 (probably published by Zatta e figli in Venice around 1785)
• 6 divertimenti for violin and double bass
• 6 sonatas for violin and double bass
• 3 concerts for soloist groups and orchestra
• Various concerts for violin and orchestra

Second creative phase

Between 1790 and 1804 primarily stage works were created, including five operas:

• Cefalo e Procri , Favoli in prosa con musica , 1 act, Padua, 1792 ( Libretto : Alessandro Ercole Conte Pepoli)
• Eco e Narciso , Favola, 1 act, Venice, 1793 (Libretto: Alessandro Ercole Conte Pepoli)
• I Bagni d'Abano ossia La Forza delle prime impressioni , Commedia , 2 acts, Venice, January 1794, Teatro Venier in San Benedetto (Libretto: Antonio Simeone Sografi after Goldoni)
• Sopra l'ingannator cade l'inganno ovvero I due granatieri , Farsa giocosa, 2 acts, 14 January 1801, Venice, Teatro Giustiniani a San Moisè (Libretto: Giuseppe Maria Foppa)
• La casa da vendere , Farsa giocosa, 1 act, January 4, 1804, Venice, Teatro Sant'Angelo (Libretto: Giulio Domenico Camagna)
• 20 ballets for venues in London, Vienna, Rome, Naples, Venice, Milan, Vicenza, Florence and Ravenna.

All operas and ballets are lost, however, only individual arias have survived.

Third creative phase

In the third phase (1804-1818) many instrumental works reappear:

• 15 concerts for violin and orchestra
• Some symphonies, cantatas for solo voices and orchestra, concerts for violoncello and orchestra, a concerto for flute and orchestra, and a sextet for strings and woodwinds

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The biographical data after the articles in MGG and Grove. Older publications often give Brescia as the place of birth .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} biography on cinnabarrecords.com ( Memento from August 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Ellen T. Harris: Handel as Orpheus. Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas. , Harvard University Press, Cambridge / Mass. 2004, ISBN 978-0-6740159-8-2 .
4. ↑ ^{a b} General Encyclopedia of Sciences from 1832 .
5. ↑ See Mayr's biography
6. ^ Josef Focht, Der Wiener Kontrabass , Tutzing 1999, ISBN 3-7952-0990-0 , p. 95.

literature

• Ludwig Finscher : Art. Giuseppe Antonio Capuzzi . In: Friedrich Blume (Ed.): The music in past and present . Vol. 15, Col. 1314ff. Directmedia, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89853-460-X .
• Kenneth Goldsmith (with Zachary Carrettin): The Venetian Paganini . In: The Strad , CXVI / No. 1387, London, November 2005, pp. 32-36. ISSN  0039-2049 .
• Johann Simon Mayr: Cenni biografici di Antonio Capuzzi, primo violinista della chiesa di S Maria Maggiore di Bergamo, poetry in morte di Ant. Capuzzi . Bergamo 1818.
• Chappell White: Art. Giuseppe Antonio Capuzzi [Capucci] . In: L. Macy (Ed.): Grove Music Online http://erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/han/362772975/www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/04886t (link not available ), Accessed February 13, 2009.

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Antonio Capuzzi in the International Music Score Library Project
• Works by and about Antonio Capuzzi in the catalog of the German National Library
• List of stage works by Antonio Capuzzi based on the MGG at Operone