ITALIAN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SONGS and DUETS
Sung by BEATRICE BEAUFORT and JANET CHRISTOPHER
ITALIAN MUSICIANS IN OTHER COUNTRIES DURING the SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
G. B. BUONONCINI (1660), a musician of undoubted merit, though not of marked originality, Buffered from too close comparison with Handel. He was attached to the Courts in Vienna, Berlin, and Rome, and then was called to London, where tho Royal Academy of Music (not tho present one), had just been founded with Handel as Director, to help place the new Institution on broad lines. Everything was political at that time, and while Handel was supported by the Hanoverian King, Buononcini was taken up by the great houses of Rutland, Queensberry, Sunderland, and Marlborough, and for many years enjoyed an income of £500 from the Marlborough family and an agreeable position in their house. He quarrelled with them later over an unfortunate incident, when he was accused of plagiarism of one of Lotti's madrigals and went to France, and later to Vienna to.com] pose the music for the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
ABBATE AGOSTIXO STEFFANI (1654), one of the most remarkable men of his age. As a boy he sang at St. Mark's in Venice and later went to Germany and became Kapellmeister at Hanover, where lie had a great influence musically. He wrote for the opening of the new Opera House there, in 1689, one of his best operas, Enrico Leone , but he was chiefly famed for his vocal duets, which are mostly in three long movements, some with recitative and soli in the Cantata form. His duets were dispersed in manuscript throughout Europe. Mattheson. says ' In these duets Steffani is incomparable to all I know and deserves to be a model, for such things do not easily become old.' He induced Handel to visit Hanover, and Handel succeeded him there as Kapellmeister.
MARCANTONIO CESTI (1620), was a pupil of Carissimi, and Kapellmeister in Vienna, 1666-1669.
MARC ANTONIO ZIANI was appointed to Vienna in 1700, and became Court Kapellmeister, 1712.