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arl Philipp Stamitz (1745-1801), who changed his given name from Karl, was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry. He was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical era. Born in Mannheim, he received lessons from his father and Christian Cannabich, his father's successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra. As a youth, Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra at Mannheim. In 1770, he began travelling as a virtuoso, accepting short-term engagements, but never managing to gain a permanent position. He visited a number of European cities, living for a time in Strasbourg and London. In 1794, he gave up travelling and moved with his family to Jena in central Germany, but his circumstances deteriorated and he descended into debt and poverty, dying in 1801. Papers on alchemy were found after his death. Stamitz wrote symphonies, symphonies concertantes, and concertos for clarinet, cello, flute, bassoon, basset horn, violin, viola, viola d’amore and different combinations of some of these instruments. Some of his clarinet and viola concertos are particularly admired. He also wrote duos, trios and quartets. Two operas, Der verliebte Vormund and Dardanus, are now lost. Stylistically, his music resembles that of Mozart or Haydn and is characterized by appealing melodies, although his writing for the solo instruments is not excessively virtuosic. The opening movements of his orchestral works, which are in sonata form, are generally followed by expressive and lyrical middle movements and final movements in the form of a rondo.

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ohann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) was a German flutist, flute maker and composer. He composed hundreds of flute sonatas and concertos, and wrote On Playing the Flute, a treatise on flute performance. Quantz was born as Hanß Jochim Quantz in Oberscheden, near Göttingen, in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He began his musical studies as a child with his uncle's son-in-law (his blacksmith father died when Quantz was young; on his deathbed, he begged his son to follow in his footsteps), later going to Dresden and Vienna. He studied composition extensively and pored over scores of the masters to adopt their style. During his tenure in Dresden, he abandoned the violin and the oboe in order to pursue the flute. He studied with Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin. It was during this time as musician to Frederick Augustus II of Poland that he began to concentrate on the flute, performing more and more on the instrument. He gradually became known as the finest flutist in Europe, and toured France and England. He became a flute teacher, flute maker and composer to Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great) in 1740. He was an innovator in flute design, adding keys to the instrument to help with intonation, for example. He often criticized Vivaldi for being too wild when he played. Although Quantz wrote many pieces of music, mainly for the flute (including around 300 flute concertos and over 200 sonatas), he is best known today as the author of Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752) (titled On Playing the Flute in English), a treatise on traverso flute playing. It is a valuable source of reference regarding performance practice and flute technique in the 18th century. Quantz died in 1773 in Potsdam.

© Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Version: 9 June 2015)

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iovanni Battista Sammartini (c.1700-1775) was an Italian composer, oboist, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach. It has also been noted that many stylizations in Joseph Haydn's compositions are similar to those of Sammartini, although Haydn denied any such influence. Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while "the prevailing impression left by Sammartini's work... [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end". He is often confused with his brother, Giuseppe, a composer with a similarly prolific output (and the same initials). Giovanni Battista Sammartini was born to French emigrant and oboist Alexis Saint-Martin and Girolama de Federici in Milan, in what was Austria during most of his lifetime and Italy today. He was the seventh of eight children. He received musical instruction from his father and wrote his first work in 1725, which was a set of vocal works (now lost). Not long after, he acquired the positions of maestro di cappella at Sant'Ambrogio and to the Congregazione del Santissimo Entierro in 1728. He held the position at Sant'Ambrogio until his death. Sammartini quickly became famous as a church composer and obtained fame outside of Italy by the 1730s. Over the course of the years, he joined many churches for work (8 or more by his death) and wrote music to be performed at state occasions and in houses of nobility. Although he never strayed far from Milan, he came into contact with many notable composers including J.C. Bach, Mozart, Boccherini, and Gluck, the latter of whom became his student from the years 1737 to 1741. Sammartini's death in 1775 was unexpected. Although he was highly regarded in his time, his music was quickly forgotten, and was not rediscovered until 1913 by researchers Fausto Torrefranca, Georges de Saint-Foix and Gaetano Cesari. However, most of his surviving works have been recovered from published editions from outside his hometown of Milan. Sammartini is mostly praised for his innovations in the development of the symphony, perhaps more so than the schools of thought in Mannheim and Vienna. His approach to symphonic composition was unique in that it drew influence from the trio sonata and concerto forms, in contrast to other composers during the time that modeled symphonies after the Italian overture. His symphonies were driven by rhythm and a clearer form, especially early sonata and rounded binary forms. His works never ceased to be inventive, and sometimes anticipated the direction of classical music such as the Sturm und Drang style.

© Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Version: 9 June 2015)