Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello: Concerto for Violin, Oboe and Strings in G minor | II Grave | 1738
Movement: II Grave
Concerto: Concerto for violin, oboe, strings & b.c. in G minor
Collection: Musical Collection of the Counts Schönborn-Wiesentheid (Ms 446)
Year published: 1738
Printer: Michel-Charles Le Cène, Plates 527-528, Amsterdam
Publication title: 12 Concerti et Sinphonie, Op. 1
Publication housed in: Saxon State and University Library Dresden
Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello (1690-1758) was one of the many Italian musicians who left their mark on music particularly in the German states. His preserved works are primarily instrumental chamber music and orchestral works, with the Concerti et Sinphonie, standing out as the only published edition. His concertos clearly display touches of the Venetian tradition influenced by Vivaldi's structure of alternating ritornelli with solo episodes.
Some of the Brescianello's concerto movements prove to be an interesting mixture of older and newer elements, of Italian and French tradition, full of melodic elegance and rhythmic vitality,
and endowed with a special feeling for orchestral timbre. Individual turns of phrase even seem to give the listener a glimpse of the new musical language of the mid-eighteenth century.
Talented Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello built his reputation more on performing and conducting than composing. Although he was a native of Florence, born in Bologna, it was in Venice (while he studied violin technique) that came to the attention of the Elector of Bavaria, Max Emanuel who thereupon engaged him in 1715 as a viola player and brought him to Munich. In October 1716 Brescianello became Kammer-und-Concert Meister at the Württemberg court of Duke Eberhard Ludwig in Stuttgart. In 1717 he obtained in addition, the post of Kapellmeister before being raised in 1731 to the rank of Counsellor and First Kapellmeister. He was successfully in charge of a large court orchestra that on occasion numbered more than sixty musicians.
Following the death of the sovereign Karl Alexander in 1737, the court finances were so catastrophically reduced that the orchestra was reduced to just a few musicians and Brescianello lost his post. It was during this period that his Opus 1 Concerti et Sinfonie Overture with the Concerto that you are listening right now, was created and published in Amsterdam in 1738.
When the new Duke Carl Eugen assumed the throne in 1744, court opera was brought back and Brescianello was reappointed as Oberkapellmeister. He led the court and opera music for the rest of his career at the Württemberg court. He was pensioned off in the period between 1751 and 1755. He remained in Stuttgart, where he died in 1758.
His successors on a post as Kapellmeister at the Württemberg court were Ignaz Holzbauer and then Niccolò Jommelli.
Vivaldi's influence:
Yet despite their apparent differences, both composers produced concerti of the highest order, brimming with energy and virtuosity. Vivaldi’s powerful influence can be found in much of Brescianello’s music. Did Brescianello meet Vivaldi whilst working in Venice as a valet for the exiled Empress of Bavaria in the early 1710s?
References:
Simon McVeigh, Jehoash Hirshberg: The Italian Solo Concerto
Thomas Drescher: G. B. Brescianello Concerti, Sinfonie, Ouverture
Cover art:
Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767)
An Old Man with a Dog (circa 1740), Oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This painting An Old Man with a Dog Ceruti painted between 1742 and 1743 during his stay in Milan where he was mostly painting religious works and portraits. It is known that Ceruti's family was from Brescia where the artist is documented in 1711 and 1721. His first commission was for various works for the parish church of Rino di Sonico, completed in 1723. The following year he signed a group of portraits of leading dignitaries of Brescia, the city in which he lived from 1726 to 1728 in order to work on the decoration of the governor’s residence in the Palazzo Broletto. This period also saw his works for the Avogadro family as well as paintings of beggars. Some of Ceruti's paintings are now in Brescia and are considered the most significant and striking works within his oeuvre. Between 1737 and 1738 the artist was working in the church of Santa Lucia in Padua, returning to Padua the following year. Despite his large output of religious episodes and saints, Ceruti’s principal focus of interest lies in his depictions of beggars.
The object featured in top left corner is based on the dome and floor plan of the Baroque masterpiece church Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (Rome), architecture designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1658-1661).
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