Giuseppe Cambini

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Giuseppe Maria Gioacchino Cambini (born February 13, 1746  ? In Livorno ; † 1818 or December 29, 1825 ?) Was an Italian composer and violinist who was very successful in Paris at the end of the 18th century. Nevertheless, his vita - including the dates of his life - is only partially known, which encouraged the creation of legends. Historiography has to be based in part on the biography universelle des musiciens of Fétis , who himself relied on uncertain sources and, for example, incorrectly gave Cambini's first name as "Giovanni Giuseppe" (Jean-Joseph).

Life

Little is known about Cambini's musical training. Apparently he studied violin with Filippo Manfredi . In the preface to one of his compositions, he himself states that he played in a string quartet with the celebrities of the time Nardini , Manfredi and Boccherini (this could have taken place in Milan in 1765). An anecdote has it that Cambini, after the failure of one of his operas, left Naples with his fiancée on a ship that was captured by pirates around 1767. A rich Venetian then bought him free from slavery in Spain.

Around 1770 Cambini moved to Paris (verifiably there from 1773), where he was presumably introduced to musical life by Gossec and his works, especially concertante symphonies , were performed with great success at the Concert Spirituel and other concert series. As a composer of this musical genre, he soon assumed a leading role in Paris. To this day, Cambini is connected (unproven) with the suspicion of preventing the premiere of a work by Mozart in which he could have seen a competitor. When Mozart was in Paris in 1778, the premiere of his newly composed Symphony Concertante KV 297b was planned for a Concert Spirituel, which, however, had to be canceled because the parts were not completed on time. Instead, a work by Cambini was played. In a letter to his father, Mozart made positive comments about his music, but at the same time suspected him of having thwarted the performance (the following persons were three of the planned soloists):

... but I think Cambini is a welsch maestro here, cause ... he made quartetti, which I heard about in Mannheim; who are pretty pretty; and then I praised him; and played him the beginning; But there was the knight, Ram and Punto , and didn't leave me any peace, I would like to continue and do what I don't know myself. so I did it there. and Cambini was quite beside himself; and could not refrain from saying this is a gran testa! Well, he won't have liked that ...

Cambini also made a name for himself in Paris as an opera composer. His fame went so far that sometimes music by other composers appeared under his name, for example a symphony by Joseph Martin Kraus .

From 1788 Cambini probably worked as musical director of the Théâtre des Beaujolais (until its closure in 1791) in Paris, and then headed the Théâtre Louvois until 1794 , which went bankrupt that year. He was helped by the army supplier Armand Seguin , who employed him for some time with an annual salary of 4,000 francs.

During the French Revolution , Cambini turned to composing patriotic-revolutionary hymns and songs, which in 1794 brought him the sum of 2,000 livres . After the political situation calmed down somewhat, Cambini composed less, which was also related to health problems, and instead published essays on music, while the popularity of his music declined rapidly. From 1803 to 1805 he wrote for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung and from 1810-11 he worked for Garaudes music newspaper Tablettes de Polymnie . From this time on, however, the biographical information on Cambini became very uncertain. One assumption is that he lived in Paris until his death in the 1820s and died there in the Bicêtre poorhouse on December 29, 1825 (possibly by suicide). According to other sources, however, he moved to the Netherlands and died there in 1818 at the latest.

plant

In addition to several operas, Cambini wrote oratorios, motets and at least 82 concertante symphonies, 51 of which have survived. Among his chamber music works are in particular numerous concertante, two-movement string quartets, which led some musicologists to assign Cambini an important role in the development of the string quartet in France.

Cambini also played a not insignificant role in the development of the classical wind quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. His Trois Quintetti Concertans , published in 1802, were written several years before the first quintets by Anton Reicha , who is often referred to as the "father of the wind quintet" (an even earlier forerunner of this line-up has only been preserved by Antonio Rosetti , whose E flat major quintet, which was written around 1780, took place a horn is the waist , a type of tenor oboe or an English horn).

Cambini also wrote several textbooks.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Cambini in the biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique by Fétis (French)
  2. ↑ Mozart's letter to his father, Salzburg, dated Paris, May 1, 1778. Quoted from: Stefan Kunze (Ed.): Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Briefe. Stuttgart, Philipp Reclam jun., 1987/2005, pp. 123ff. ISBN 3-15-010574-9

literature

  • L. Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in the past and present . Kassel et al., Bärenreiter 2000, person part vol. 4, p. 9ff. ISBN 3-7618-1110-1

Web links

Commons : Giuseppe Cambini  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Cambini, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cambini, Giuseppe Maria Gioacchino (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian composer and violinist
DATE OF BIRTH on February 13, 1746
PLACE OF BIRTH Livorno
DATE OF DEATH on December 29, 1825
Place of death uncertain: Bicêtre near Paris