Johann Adolph Hasse

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Johann Adolph Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse. Engraving by Lorenzo Zucchi
Johann Adolph Hasse. Painting by Balthasar Denner in the Semperoper in Dresden

Johann Adolph Hasse (Italianized Giovanni Adolfo ; baptized March 25, 1699 in Bergedorf ; † December 16, 1783 in Venice ) was an influential German composer of the late Baroque period . His fame during his lifetime was largely based on his Italian-style operas .

Life

Youth and education

Johann Adolph Hasse came from a family of organists who had been organist at the Church of St. Petri and Pauli in Bergedorf for three generations , and was the great-grandson of Peter Hasse the Elder , a student of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck from Amsterdam. In 1714 he began to study singing in Hamburg , where the poet Johann Ulrich von König noticed him and recommended him as a tenor at the opera on Gänsemarkt in 1718 . The following year, Hasse moved to Braunschweig , where his first opera Antioco was performed in the opera house on Hagenmarkt on August 11, 1721 with him in the title role. Since Northern Germany otherwise offered him little prospects, Hasse traveled to Italy and studied composition in Naples from 1722 to 1725 with Nicola Porpora and Alessandro Scarlatti .

Hate's wife, Faustina Bordoni, la nuova sirena . Painting by Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757)

"Il divino Sassone"

In September 1725 he performed his Serenade Antonio e Cleopatra , in which Vittoria Tesi and Farinelli sang, at the country estate of Carlo Carmignano , the royal councilor at the court of Naples . With Sesostrate he made his successful debut on May 13, 1726 at the renowned Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples and with his subsequent operas he was among the most popular opera composers in Italy. At the latest, the success of Artaserse in the carnival season of 1730 in Venice made Hasse, who had earned the nickname il divino Sassone ("the divine Saxon"), known beyond Italy. This was also his first collaboration with the poet Pietro Metastasio , with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

On July 20, 1730, Hasse married the opera singer Faustina Bordoni, who was celebrated as "La nuova Sirena" . From July 7th to October 8th, 1731 they both gave a guest performance in Dresden , where Hasse premiered his opera Cleofide on September 13th, 1731 . Among the audience were also Johann Sebastian Bach and his eldest son , Wilhelm Friedemann , who frequently also in later years Dresden Court Opera visited to hear "pretty little songs" as the Thomas Kantor called hate arias slightly mocking. King August the Strong awarded Hasse the title of “Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Kapellmeister ”. His official entry into service took place on December 1, 1733 under the new ruler August III. instead of; until then, Hasse and Faustina Bordoni continued to travel through Italy and increased their fame with joint opera appearances.

Achievements and rivalries

During his thirty-year tenure as court conductor in Dresden, Hasse formed the opera staff there into one of the top ensembles of the time. In addition to the singers headed by Faustina Bordoni, the orchestra he had reorganized was considered so exemplary that Jean-Jacques Rousseau published the seating plan for this orchestra in the article Orchester of his Encyclopédie as a prime example. The royal court in Dresden granted Hasse and his Faustina generous freedoms so that they could maintain their contacts in their actual artistic homeland, Italy. The Hasse couple recorded at least five long trips abroad during their Dresden period: from November 1734 to January 1737, from September 1738 to late 1739, from April 1744 to late summer 1745, from July 1746 to early January 1747 and in the course of 1754. Center of these trips was Venice, where Hasse had owned a house since 1735.

It has not been established whether Hasse was in London at the end of 1734 , where the Opera of the Nobility , which was hostile to Georg Friedrich Handel and directed by Nicola Porpora, played an adaptation of his Artaserse . According to some sources, Hasse is said to have turned down an invitation to London on the grounds that he was unable to compete against Handel. Perhaps he also wanted to avoid meeting Porpora, who is said to have not been on good terms with him since an unexplained incident during Hasse's student days in Naples. If Hasse was really interested in avoiding Porpora, this was no longer possible when the latter came to Dresden in 1748 and was immediately appointed singing teacher of the Elector Princess Maria Antonia Walpurgis and Kapellmeister. As a result, there were grotesque arguments between the two band masters. Porpora is said to have claimed that Hasse intentionally composed the aria Se tutti i mali miei in the opera Demofoonte in such a way that it was unfavorable for the voice of Porpora's pupil Regina Mingotti and exposed her vocal weaknesses. Indeed, the aria in question belongs to the role played by Bordoni in this opera. With his appointment as head conductor (January 7, 1749), Hasse regained the upper hand, while Mingotti rose to the public's favorite among Dresden singing stars. Porpora left Dresden in early 1752; Bordoni had retired as a singer for unknown reasons in early 1751 after the last performance of Hasse's opera Ciro riconosciuto .

From May to August 1750, Hasse stayed in Paris at the invitation of the French court. The followers of the French Enlightenment around the philosophers Voltaire and Rousseau celebrated him as an ambassador of the Italian musical culture, which they considered to be superior to their own. For Hasse, the invitation to Paris was the high point of his European fame.

Seven Years War

With the outbreak of the Seven Years' War , the "Hasse era" in Dresden began to come to an end. On September 9, 1756, the Prussian King Friedrich II occupied the city. Friedrich was a great admirer of Hasse's art. As early as 1742 he had asked Count Francesco Algarotti to send him a copy of the aria All'onor mio rifletti from Lucio Papirio ; upon receipt, he had Algarotti congratulate Hasse on this composition by letter. In Dresden, the Prussian king, himself a passionate flautist and amateur composer, used every opportunity despite the state of war to make music with the Hasse couple.

When Dresden was bombarded with cannons on July 19, 1760, Hasse's house burned down, along with the copies of his collected works prepared for engraving. While King August III. and his court moved to the second residence in Warsaw for the duration of the war , Hasse moved with his family (which also included two daughters, Maria Peppina and Cristina) to Vienna in February 1764 and was there temporarily as a music teacher to Archduchesses Maria Carolina and Maria Antonia ( Marie Antoinette ).

Vienna and Venice

After the end of the war, Hasse and Bordoni returned to Dresden in the summer of 1763. Immediately after the death of King August III. on October 5, 1763 they had to be dismissed by his successor Friedrich Christian , as the country was financially ruined by war and occupation. On December 17, 1763, Friedrich Christian also died unexpectedly. Hasse composed and conducted the music for the funeral ceremonies of his two former employers and then left Dresden. First he left for Vienna on February 20, 1764. There, the supporters of a reform of the Italian opera around Christoph Willibald Gluck had become more and more numerous, but the taste of the imperial court still stuck to the traditional opera seria . Hasse himself carefully approached the Reformed opera type with the “tragic Intermezzo” Piramo e Tisbe (November 1768), which he described as one of his most successful works.

In January 1771, Maria Theresa commissioned Hasse to write the festival opera Il Ruggiero based on a new libretto by Metastasio on the occasion of Archduke Ferdinand's wedding with Princess Maria Beatrice d'Este . Both Hasse and Metastasio concluded their life's work with this opera. It was performed on October 16, 1771 in the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan as the main point of the musical program of the wedding celebrations, but received little response. As can be seen from letters, both artists recognized that the time of the operatic aesthetics they cultivated and which they did not want to part with was over. The opera Ascanio in Alba by fifteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , performed the next day, attracted much more attention . Hasse is said to have said: "This boy will make us all forget."

In April 1773 the Hasse couple moved to Venice to spend their old age there. Faustina Bordoni died on November 4, 1781; her husband outlived her by two years. They found their final resting place in the church of San Marcuola in Venice.

plant

Memorial in front of his birthplace in Bergedorf

With his operas, Hasse literally became the leading composer of the opera seria , as it had received its literary form through the poems of Pietro Metastasio . Metastasio's libretti were set to music by almost all well-known composers throughout the 18th century (and in some cases beyond), some more than fifty times; the poet himself, however, found the way in which Hasse dressed his dramas musically to be particularly congenial and placed him above all his other musicians.

The form of the opera seria, as it was already developed in the basics at the beginning of his career as an opera composer, led Hasse to completion without adding anything fundamentally new or questioning it. To the end he remained true to the scheme, which consisted of a series of arias with connecting recitatives. The latter are usually set to music as a secco recitative . Following a recommendation from Metastasio, Hasse makes only sparing use of the orchestral accompaniment recitative ; but these scenes, reserved for the climax of the dramatic tension curve, are particularly effective.

In his later Dresden operas, for which he had an independent choir, Hasse enriched the musical treasure trove with choral scenes such as the soldiers' choir in Solimano (with an additional stage orchestra) and the solemn priestly choir in L'olimpiade . His works, written for Italian theaters, are content with the obligatory final song, only known pro forma as “Coro”, which is performed jointly by the soloists and proclaims the moral of the story.

Hasse's arias (and also the duets, usually one for each opera) mostly follow the da capo form , as was common in his day . The singing is in the foreground, entirely dedicated to the task of accentuating the linguistic elegance and the emotional content of the text. Hasse's melodic ingenuity does justice to all grades of the emotional scale that can appear in a metastasian drama, but it was above all gently melancholic love and farewell songs like the now relatively well-known Per questo dolce amplesso from Artaserse , to which he owes his popularity.

Hasse also knew how to handle the orchestral part superbly. The instruments keep adding characteristic colors to the painting of a poetic and musical image without being in the foreground at the expense of the singing.

Hasse's contemporaries admired the elegant simplicity of his music and the skill with which he achieved brilliant, never intrusive effects without great effort. From today's perspective, his music may seem less original than Handel's. It seems to be less an expression of an individual personality than the fulfillment of what was envisioned as a musical ideal of beauty in his time.

effect

The more peripheral role that Hasse plays in today's musical life hardly corresponds to its significance in music history. He was one of the most celebrated composers of the 18th century and was able to count personalities such as Maria Theresa , Friedrich II of Prussia and Voltaire (who called him the “hero of the century”) among his admirers. However, his work was so committed to the aesthetics of its time that it had to go under with it.

The type of opera, which forms the focus of Hasse's oeuvre and is considered to be the most typical representative of it, does not have an easy position on the modern opera stage. The serious Italian opera of the 18th century is represented there almost exclusively by works by Handel and Gluck (on the Sound carrier market additionally through Antonio Vivaldi as well as scattered individual pieces in aria recitals), which deviate more or less strongly from the normal form of the opera seria .

Works

Operas

(in brackets name of the librettist, place and year of the premiere)

Intermezzi

Cantatas and Serenatas

Oratorios

  • Il cantico de 'tre fanciulli ( Stefano Pallavicini ; Dresden 1734, rev.Vienna 1774)
  • Le Virtù appié della Croce (Stefano Pallavicini; Dresden 1737)
  • Giuseppe riconosciuto (Pietro Metastasio; Dresden 1741)
  • I pellegrini al Sepolcro (Stefano Pallavicini; Dresden 1742)
Text book (Italian / German) of the performance on Good Friday 1747, SLUB
Die Pilgrimme auf Golgatha , German version by Johann Adam Hiller (1784) with the translation by Johann Joachim Eschenburg , digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3DNBFOZkWiC7QC~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D , The British Library
  • La deposizione della Croce (Giovanni Cosimo Pasquini; Dresden 1744)
  • La caduta di Gerico (Giovanni Cosimo Pasquini; Dresden 1745)
  • S. Elena al Calvario (Pietro Metastasio; Dresden 1746, rev.Vienna 1772)
  • La conversione di Sant 'Agostino (Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Saxony; Dresden 1750)
  • Serpentes ignei in deserto (Bonaventura Bonomo; Venice 1740 (?))
  • S. Petrus et S. Maria Magdalena (Venice ca.1759)

Religious music

  • Beatus vir
  • Confitebor tibi, F major
  • Dixit Dominus, C major
  • Litaniae Lauretanae, G major for soprano and alto solos, soprano and alto tutti and organ (1762, composed for and performed by Empress Maria Theresa and her children)
  • Mass in a
  • Mass in d (1751, for the inauguration of the Catholic Court Church in Dresden)
  • Missae ultimae (Venice 1779–1783; dedicated to the Saxon Court and the Princely Chapel in Dresden)
    • Mass in E flat major (1779) - re-performance in Dresden 1999 (concert)
    • Mass in D major (1780) - re-performance in Dresden at Easter 2006 and Christmas 2015 (Hofkirche)
    • Mass in G minor (1783) - re-performance in Dresden 1983 (concert)
  • Miserere in d
  • Miserere in F
  • Miserere in c
  • Regina Coeli in D
  • Requiem in C major (1763, for the burial of August III in the Catholic Court Church in Dresden)
  • Requiem in E flat major (probably 1763/64, for the burial of Friedrich Christian in the Catholic Court Church in Dresden)
  • Salve Regina in A
  • Salve Regina in F for soprano and alto solos, soprano and alto tutti and organ (1762, composed for and performed by Empress Maria Theresia and her children)
  • Sub tuum praesidium in B flat major , for soprano and alto solos, soprano and alto tutti and organ (1762, composed for and performed by Empress Maria Theresia and her children)
  • Te Deum (1751, for the inauguration of the Catholic Court Church in Dresden)
  • Venite pastores. Motetto pastoral

Printed works

  • Op. 1: XII Sonata à Flauto traversiere solo è Basso (Paris)
  • Op. 2: Sei Sonata a tre à due Flauti ò due Violini col Basso (London, ca.1735; Paris)
  • Op. 3: Twelve Concertos in six Parts, for a German Flute, two Violins, a Tenor , with a thorough Bass for the Harpsicord or Violoncello (London, 1741)
  • Op. 3: Six Sonatas or Trios for two German Flutes or two Violins and a thorough Bass for the Harpsichord (London, ca.1757)
  • Op. 4: Six Concertos for Violins, French Horns or Hoboys & c. with a thorough Bass for the Harpsicord or Violoncello in eight Parts (London, 1741)
  • Op. 5: Six Simphonies a quatre Parties, deux Violon, Alto Viola, et Basse continüe (Paris, 1740)
  • Op. 5: Six Solos for a German Flute or Violin with a thorough Bass for the Harpsicord or Violoncello (London, ca.1744 )
  • Op. 6: Six Concertos in six Parts for a German Flute, two Violins, a Tenor, with a thorough Bass for the Harpsicord or Violoncello (London, 1750)
  • Op. 7: 6 sonata per harpsichord (London)

literature

  • Robert Eitner :  Hasse, Johann Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 755-758.
  • Rudolf Gerber: The opera type Johann Adolf Hasse and its textual basis. Leipzig 1925.
  • Horst Heussner:  Hasse, Johann Adolf Peter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , pp. 41-43 ( digitized version ).
  • Hans Kellinghusen: Johann Adolf Hasse's ancestors . In: Lichtwark No. 8 (1st year). Edited by Lichtwark Committee Bergedorf, Bergedorf 1949. See now HB-Werbung Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf. ISSN  1862-3549 .
  • Michael Koch: Johann Adolf Hasse's oratorios. Tradition and structure. Pfaffenweiler 1989, ISBN 3-89085-356-0 .
  • Ortrun Landmann : Catalog of the Dresden Hasse music manuscripts. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-40435-2 .
  • Raffaele Mellace : Johann Adolf Hasse. Palermo 2004, ISBN 88-8302-248-3 .
  • Carl Mennicke: Hasse and the Graun brothers as symphonic orchestras. Along with biographies and thematic catalogs. Leipzig 1906 (basic).
  • Frederick L. Millner: The Operas of Johann Adolf Hasse. Ann Arbor 1979, ISBN 0-8357-1006-8 .
  • Panja Mücke: Johann Adolf Hasse's Dresden operas in the context of court culture. Laaber-Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-89007-553-2 .
  • Walther Müller: Johann Adolf Hasse as a church composer. Leipzig 1910.
  • Marianne R. Pfau: Hasse's glass harmonica: "Musica Coelestis" or "The Devil's Work"? . In: Lichtwark booklet No. 65. Verlag HB-Werbung, Hamburg-Bergedorf, 2004. ISSN  1862-3549 .
  • Roland Dieter Schmidt-Hensel: La musica è del Signor Hasse detto il Sassone. Johann Adolf Hasse's opera series from 1730 to 1745. Sources, versions, performances. Part I: Representation. V&R unipress, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-441-8 .
  • Roland Dieter Schmidt-Hensel: La musica è del Signor Hasse detto il Sassone. Johann Adolf Hasse's opera series from 1730 to 1745. Sources, versions, performances. Part II: List of works, sources and performance. V&R unipress, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-442-5 .
  • Imme Tempke: Mozart and the " music father" Hasse . In: Lichtwark booklet No. 71. HB-Werbung publishing house, Hamburg-Bergedorf, 2006. ISSN  1862-3549 .
  • Imme Tempke: Hasse's music education in Hamburg . In: Lichtwark booklet No. 67. Verlag HB-Werbung, Hamburg-Bergedorf, 2002. ISSN  1862-3549 .
  • Reinhard Wiesend: Johann Adolf Hasse in his time. Carus, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89948-079-5 .
  • JG Bernhardt Zeller: The recitativo accompagnato in the operas of Johann Adolf Hasse. Halle / Saale 1911.

museum

In March 2015, the Johann Adolph Hasse Museum (spelling: Johann Adolph Hasse Museum ) was opened in Hamburg , which together with the museums for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , Johannes Brahms , Gustav Mahler , Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Georg Philipp Telemann forms the composers' quarter on Peterstrasse.

Web links

Commons : Johann Adolph Hasse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Only the German-Italian textbook has survived from the opera. In keeping with the usage of the time, it can be assumed that the recitatives were sung in German and the arias in Italian in Braunschweig. According to Gerber [zn Mennicke, p. 358] Antiochus was Hate's only opera based on a German text. See in more detail: Carl Mennicke: Hasse and the Graun brothers as symphonists. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1906, p. 358.
  2. ^ Short biography Johann Adolph Hasse Society Munich
  3. ↑ Euristeo. Libretto Naples 1732
  4. ^ Don Neville:  Metastasio [Trapassi], Pietro (Antonio Domenico Bonaventura). In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  5. ↑ acta.musicologica.cz (Czech), accessed on September 24, 2014.
  6. ^ Hasse, Johann Adolf / Pallavicini, Stefano Benedetto: Alfonso. For the wedding of Charles III, King of Spain, with Princess Maria Amalia of Saxony . Libretto as digitized version
  7. ^ Antigono (Hasse) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna , accessed on October 1, 2014.
  8. ↑ n.18 . Teatro di San Girolamo. Description of the puppet theater on graziussi.com , accessed December 25, 2014.
  9. ^ Libretto data set for Lo starnuto d'Ercole in the Catalogo delle Biblioteca Braidense (Italian), accessed on December 25, 2014.
  10. ↑ Eleanor Selfridge-Field: A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660-1760 , Stanford 2007, ISBN 978-0-8047-4437-9 , p. 624 f ( online at Google Books).
  11. ↑ The Sneeze of Hercules. ( January 26, 2015 memento on the Internet Archive ) Performance record at the Northwest Puppet Center Seattle, accessed December 25, 2014.
  12. ^ Johann Adolph Hasse: Leucippo at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival 2014 ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
  13. ↑ Leucippo in the program of the Cologne Opera, October 9, 2014 ( Memento from May 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  14. ^ Artemisia. Libretto Dresden 1755
  15. ↑ Francesco Ricciardi. Retrieved February 24, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Rheinsberg Castle Easter Festival April 9-13, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Agnes Thiel / Eberhard Steindorf: Program leaflet for the performance of the fair on December 25, 2015 in Dresden
  18. ↑ Hamburg Composers' Quarter
personal data
SURNAME Hasse, Johann Adolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hasse, Johann Adolf; Hasse, Giovanni Adolfo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer of the baroque
DATE OF BIRTH baptized March 25, 1699
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg-Bergedorf
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1783
Place of death Venice