Emanuele d'Astorga

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Emanuele d'Astorga

Emanuele d'Astorga (actually: Emanuele Gioacchino Cesare Baron Rincón d'Astorga ; born March 20, 1680 in Augusta (Sicily) , † 1757  [?] In Madrid ) was an Italian composer .

Life

Emanuele d'Astorga was a member of the noble family Rincón d'Astorga, originally from Spain , who had lived in Sicily since the early 17th century . After an earthquake, the family moved to Palermo in 1693 . A little later, Emanuele's father, Francesco d'Astorga, was stripped of the title of nobility and the rights associated with it because he had tried to murder his wife. The father received his title and rights back in 1702 and was appointed Senator of Palermo in 1706.

Emanuele d'Astorga first appeared as a composer in 1698 when his opera “La moglie nemica” was given in a private performance in the house of the noble Lucchese family. Astorga participated as a singer himself.

In 1708 he left Palermo because of disputes with the family and since then has led an unsettled wandering life. First Astorga went to Rome , where he stayed in the vicinity of the Spanish ambassador Baron Uceda. In this company he met the poet Nicolò Sebastiano Biancardi, who worked under the pseudonym Domenico Lalli and wrote numerous cantata texts for Astorga.

Together with Lalli, Astorga went to Genoa in 1709 . Since he suffered from a lack of money, he intended to improve his fortune there through an opera performance and composed “Dafni” for this purpose. In the following years Astorga stayed with Lalli in Mantua and Venice .

At the end of 1709 and beginning of 1710 Astorga went to Spain because he was invited by the heir to the throne Charles (later Charles VI as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire ), who was impressed by the opera “Dafni”.

There is evidence of Astorga in Vienna in 1712, where he received an honorary salary from Emperor Joseph I. Nevertheless, he got into debt and therefore fled the city in 1714.

In 1715 he went back to Palermo, where he married Emanuela Guzzardi (* around 1702) in 1717. In 1717/18 Astorga was Senator of Palermo, from 1718 to 1720 he held the office of Governatore of the Ospedale degli Incussabili.

On payment of an annuity, in 1721 he left the usufruct of his lands to his wife and left Sicily. In 1723 he stayed in Lisbon , where he had a collection of cantatas printed in 1726. There is no more reliable information about his later life. A manuscript from the Santini Collection in Munster states that Emanuele d'Astorga died in Madrid in 1757.

Audio language

Astorga never held a musical position and, because of his aristocratic origins, did not consider himself a professional musician, but a dilettante who composed for his own pleasure. Accordingly, most of the compositions he has handed down are chamber music cantatas for one or more vocal parts with basso continuo accompaniment , a genre that was very popular in the house music of the aristocratic circles at the time. The cantatas are mostly in the form of recitative - aria -recitative-aria or aria-recitative-aria and are stylistically in the tradition of Alessandro Scarlatti . Among the numerous composing amateurs of his time, Astorga stands out due to his great craftsmanship, which corresponds to that of professional musicians. His music continues to show a great talent for inventing melodies and the safe use of compositional means in the sense of the doctrine of affect . From other composers who were in the same tradition, his works do not differ stylistically so much that unequivocal attributions of anonymously transmitted pieces to Astorga are possible. Astorga's only known sacred work, the Stabat mater in C minor, enjoyed great popularity until the mid-19th century.

Johann Adolf Scheibe found the following words of praise for Astorga's work in Critischen Musicus 1745: “What should I say of Marcello , the famous Venetian knight, of the Count of Astorgas, of the elder Conti and others? Certainly the refinement of the taste of these men was almost without the slightest fault. "

Works

  • 208 handwritten chamber cantatas for voice and figured bass
  • Cantadas humanas a solo , 12 chamber cantatas for voice and figured bass (Lisbon 1726)
  • Presso i momenti estremi , chamber cantata for voice and 3-part string orchestra
  • E pur Cesare ha vinto , chamber cantata for voice and 4-part string orchestra
  • Antri spelanche , chamber cantata for voice, figured bass and obbligato cello
  • 7 chamber duets for 2 voices and figured bass
  • Caro tu patri , chamber duet for 2 voices and 4-part string orchestra
  • Stabat mater in C minor for solos, choir, orchestra and organ (1707?)
  • La moglie nemica , opera (Premiere Palermo 1698, only libretto preserved)
  • Dafni , opera (premiere Genoa 1709, only libretto and 1st act preserved)

Fame and fame

It was not until the 20th century that Hans Volkmann's well-founded two-volume monograph did away with the legends that had been around Astorga until then. Volkmann wrote in the introduction to his first volume:

“Even today, Astorga's main work, the Stabat Mater, is able to exert the most profound effect on the listener. Among the church compositions of the Italian school of the beginning of the 18th century, it forms a single phenomenon which by far surpasses the related creations of this epoch in religious intimacy, in seriousness of the conception of the subject and harsh power of the mood expression, without therefore the sensual beauty that the peculiar to most of the Italian works of the time. These advantages give the setting of the Stabat Mater by Astorga a place of honor among the numerous compositions of this ecclesiastical text.

The Stabat Mater established Astorga's fame with posterity. Only a few may have known it during the master's lifetime. And yet even then Astorga was a composer's name with a good sound. Everyone knew him as the great master of the chamber cantata. Astorga had worked diligently and with luck in this field, so that he was highly regarded as a cantata composer not only in Italy but throughout Europe. This fame had to fade with the disappearance of the art genre of the chamber cantata.

Astorga has not only done enough for the best of his time as a secular composer, but also created something immortal as an ecclesiastical composer. He therefore deserves to be taken note of his person and the fate of his life, he deserves that the tangle of lies and fairy tales that has piled up around his appearance over time, that the romantic-fantastic image of his personality through a historically faithful will be replaced. "

Legends

d'Astorga's unsteady life gave rise to legends in later times. Among other things, the story is known that Astorga's father is said to have been beheaded in 1701 for participating in a rebellion. His wife and son had to watch the execution, whereupon Emanuele fell into deep depression and his mother died of fright. Another story says that Astorga entered the service of the Duke of Parma in 1703, fell in love with Elisabetta Farnese and was therefore dismissed.

From the legends, the music writer Friedrich Rochlitz formed a short story in 1825 that had a lasting impact on the image of the composer in the 19th century. A product of this reception is also the opera Astorga by Johann Joseph Abert , written in 1866 , in which Astorga's Stabat mater is even quoted.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Rochlitz, For Friends of Tonkunst , 2nd edition, Leipzig 1830, Volume 2, pp. 87-102 (in the chapter on domestic music. Therese to her husband ) ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Astorga, Emanuele d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Astorga, Emanuele Gioacchino Cesare Baron Rincón d '(full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1680
PLACE OF BIRTH Augusta (Sicily)
DATE OF DEATH around 1757
Place of death unsure: Madrid