Francesco Durante

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Francesco Durante (31 March 1684 – 30 September 1755) was a Neapolitan composer.

Biography

He was born at

as head of the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, also in Naples. This post he held for thirteen years, till his death in Naples. He was married three times.

His fame as a teacher was considerable, and Niccolò Jommelli, Giovanni Paisiello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Niccolò Piccinni and Leonardo Vinci were amongst his pupils. As a teacher, he insisted on the unreasoning observance of rules, differing thus from Scarlatti, who treated all his pupils as individuals.

Opéra Garnier

, Paris, perhaps by virtue of his students

A complete collection of Durante's works, consisting almost exclusively of sacred music, was presented by Gaspare Selvaggi, a Neapolitan art collector and music theorist,^[1] to the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. A catalogue may be found in Fétis's Biographie universelle. The imperial library of Vienna also preserves a valuable collection of Durante's manuscripts. Two requiems, several masses (one of which, a most original work, is the Pastoral Mass for four voices) and the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah are amongst his most important settings. His Magnificat achieved popularity partly because of its misattribution to Pergolesi.

The fact that Durante never composed for the stage brought him an exaggerated reputation as a composer of sacred music. Considered one of the best church composers of his style and period, he seems to have founded the sentimental school of Italian church music. Nevertheless, Hasse protested against Durante's being described as the greatest harmonist of Italy, a title which he ascribed to Alessandro Scarlatti.

Discography

• Solfèges d'Italie, No. 137: "Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile", with Frederica von Stade (mezzo-soprano) and Martin Katz (piano), CBS, 1982

Media

• Vergine tutto amore^ⓘ

References

Sources

• Sadie, S. (ed.) (1980) The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, [vol #5].
• Peter van Tour: Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples. 2015. 318p. (Studia musicologica Upsaliensia, 0081-6744 ; 25)
  ISBN 978-91-554-9197-0 [1]
  .
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dent, Edward Joseph (1911). "Durante, Francesco". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 694–695.

External links

• Media related to Francesco Durante (composer) at Wikimedia Commons
• Free scores by Francesco Durante at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Free scores by Francesco Durante in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Istituto Internazionale per lo studio del '700 musicale napoletano