Vincenzo Albrici

Vincenzo Albrici (born June 26, 1631 in Rome , † September 7, 1687 in Prague ) was an Italian composer , organist and conductor.

Live and act

Vincenzo Albrici was the offspring of a family of musicians, two of his father's brothers were composers, his father Domenico Albrici was an alto singer at the Basilica of the Holy House in Loreto , who came from Senigallia and settled in Rome. Albrici's education, which probably lasted five years, began in 1641 at the Collegium Germanico-Hungaricum , because he received a salary here from 1646. In 1647, at the age of sixteen, he became conductor at the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. In 1652 the singer Alessandro Cecconi hired an Italian opera company on behalf of Queen Christina of Sweden , among the members were Vincenzo Albrici as vice conductor, but also Albrici's father.

After the queen's abdication, Albrici moved to the court of Pfalz-Neuburg as a musician in 1654 . After a short stay in Italy, he worked at the Dresden court from 1659. In 1663 he was appointed Kapellmeister there. After the death of Elector Johann Georg III. in 1680 his new employer dismissed all Italian musicians. Albrici ended up as Thomas organist at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig for a year . After that he worked as Kapellmeister at the Augustinian Church in Prague until his death .

In addition to numerous sacred works such as masses and “sacred concerts”, he created a number of polyphonic symphonias and other chamber music works for various strong ensembles. Contemporary documents from the court cite performances of "sacred concerts" as early as 1660, in which Albrici was the first composer to use an aria.

Only 35 mostly sacred works are in the Dübensammlung of the Uppsala University Library, the remaining works were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden by the Prussian army in 1760.

His brother Bartolomeo Albrici (around 1640– after 1687) initially worked in Dresden with his older brother, later as a harpsichordist, "piano teacher" and composer at the royal court in London.

literature

• Mary E. Frandsen: Crossing confessional boundaries: the patronage of Italian sacred music in seventeenth-century Dresden. Oxford University Press, York 2006 application, ISBN 0-19-517831-9 .
• Georg von Dadelsen:  Albrici, Vincenzo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 186 ( digitized version ).
• Martin Petzoldt : The Thomas organists in Leipzig. In: Christian Wolff (Ed.): The organs of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 3-374-02300-2 , pp. 95-137 (pp. 104 f.)
• Matteo Messori, Anna Katarzyna Zaręba: Nuovi documenti su Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1687) e la sua famiglia. In: Fonti Musicali Italiane , 22, 2017.

Web links

• Works by and about Vincenzo Albrici in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sheet music and audio files by Vincenzo Albrici in the International Music Score Library Project
• Works by Albrici in the online catalog of the Dübensammlung.