Gaspar Smit

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Gaspar Smit (baptized January 6, 1767 in the Church of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona , † February 5, 1819 in Tui , Pontevedra province ) was a Spanish composer and organist . His family name is also documented in the spellings Esmit , Schmidt and Smith .

Life

Gaspar Smit was the son of the married couple Juan Esmit, musician of the regiment of the princely cavalry and Madrona Comaposada. There are doubts as to the correctness of the traditional year of birth, since Gaspar Smit was ordained with the first tonsure at the age of 13 (1779), with the four degrees in 1783 and as presbyter at the age of thirty (1797) .

In 1772 the family moved to Astorga in the province of León , where Gaspar Smit demonstrated his musical talent at an early age: at the age of eleven and a half he is said to have sung from any sheet of music, at the age of 18 he was the cathedral's conductor von Astorga and composed a mass that was widely recognized. According to Xoán M. Carreira, João Pedro de Almeida Mota was an important teacher in Smit's musical education, who trained him in the Viennese classic and the Parisian style.

In 1785 Gaspar Smit published six minuets, a printed copy of which has been preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid : Mp / 2439. His family name is spelled "Smith" on the cover of this series.

However, Gaspar Smit also wrote himself in older documents as "Schmidt" and in the cathedral of Tui ( Galicia ) as "Esmit". In Catalan , the “e” is often placed in front of it, so the Flemish-Dutch spelling “Smit” can be accepted. It is not known how many generations in which his name was inherited. It should be mentioned that in his will of 1818 Smit left 6000 reals to his sister in the spelling Maria Teresa Esmit, a nun in the Benedictine monastery of Santa Ana in Salamanca .

After Astorga, Gaspar Smit was the first organist at Tui Cathedral from 1787. In 1793 he worked as an organist and conductor at the collegiate church of Xunqueira de Ambía (Galicia). In 1796 he left the organist position in Tui and took over in 1806, meanwhile as Kapellmeister of the collegiate church in A Coruña , the Kapellmeister position again at the cathedral of Tui.

Around 160 sacred vocal works by Gaspar Smit are stored in the cathedral archives of Santiago de Compostela and Tui. Some of the piano compositions have been preserved thanks to his pupil: María Teresa de las Mercedes Verdugo y Arredondo (1778–1834) took her music books to the Santa Ana Monastery in Avila , including the four music books that she put together with the help of her teacher. The narrowest of them, dated 1787, contains simple, folkloric bits; the others, besides compositions by Gaspar Smit himself, contain sonatas and pieces by Federico Moretti , Joseph Haydn , Domenico Scarlatti and Anonyma.

The world premiere recording of works by Gaspar Smit took place in July 2008 on the clavichord by Daniel Laumans . The CD: "Claviermanuskripte aus Avila, Part 1" contains eight sonatas in minor keys.

literature

  • Xoán M. Carreira: Gaspar Schmidt. In: A Nosa Terra , 1987, ISSN  0213-3105 , p. 323.
  • Carlos Villanueva: Schmidt [Esmit, Smith] Comaposada, Gaspar. In: Emilio Casares Rodicio (ed.): Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana. Volume 9. Sociedad General de Autores, Madrid 2002, ISBN 84-8048-312-1 , pp. 865-866.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Smit, Gaspar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Esmit, Gaspar; Schmidt, Gaspar; Smith, Gaspar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish composer and organist
DATE OF BIRTH baptized January 6, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Barcelona
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1819
Place of death Tui , Pontevedra Province