Domenico Colla was an 18th-century Brescian composer and performer who traveled Europe in the 1760s, performing in the most important theaters and salons. [6] [7] Together with his brother Giuseppe, he was one of the Colla brothers. [8] The brothers played in royal circles; they performed before Frederick the Great in 1765 in the palace at Sanssouci. [2] They were in London in 1766, where it was advertised that they had performed before the British royalty, as well as other the royal families of Europe. [8] The brothers were also noted for being survivors of slavery in Algiers, rescued from it by the King of Poland. [8] [9]
The brothers played the colascione and colascioncino and guitar. [7] Domenico's name is attached to six sonatas for the smaller colascioncino. [7]
The cocolascione was a long-necked lute (strings 100 –130 cm), possibly related to the dutar or tanbur. [7] The colascioncino was tuned an octave higher with strings 50–60 cm long. [7] The instruments can have two or three strings. [7] According to the advertisement, the brothers played the two string variety. [8]
Domenico composed music, and his six sonatas for the colascioncino may be the only works that have survived for that instrument. [6] [10] Each sonata lists either the colascioncino or colascioncino of two strings. [10]
Six Colascioncino Sonatas [10] The sonatas are set up with the colascioncino playing the melody, accompanied by a bass-ranged instrument, the colascione. [11]
The violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh, Italian pronunciation:[vjolonˈtʃɛllo]), often simply abbreviated as cello ( CHEL-oh), is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
Giovanni Battista Draghi, usually referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, was an Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and organist, leading exponent of the Baroque; he is considered one of the greatest Italian musicians of the first half of the 18th century and one of the most important representatives of the Neapolitan school.
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England.
Johann Joachim Quantz was a German composer, flutist and flute maker of the late Baroque period. Much of his professional career was spent in the court of Frederick the Great. Quantz composed hundreds of flute sonatas and concertos, and wrote On Playing the Flute, an influential treatise on flute performance. His works were known and appreciated by Bach, Haydn and Mozart.
The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.
The trio sonata is a genre, typically consisting of several movements, with two melody instruments and basso continuo. It originated in the early 17th century and was a favorite chamber ensemble combination in the Baroque era.
This article is about music-related events in 1825.
Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti was an Italian double bass virtuoso and composer with a 3 string double bass. He stayed for thirty years in his hometown of Venice, Italy and worked at the Opera Buffa, at the Chapel of San Marco and at the Grand Opera in Vicenza. By that time he had become notable throughout Europe and had turned down several opportunities, including offers from the Tsar of Russia. In 1794, he finally moved to London to play in the orchestra of the King's Theatre, and settled there for the remainder of his life. In fifty years, he became a prominent figure in the musical events of the English capital, performing at the concerts of the Philharmonic Society of London as well as in more private events, where he would meet the most influential persons in the country, like the Prince Consort and the Duke of Leinster. He was acquainted with composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, whom he visited on several occasions in Vienna, and to whom he showed the possibilities of the double bass as a solo instrument. His ability on the instrument also demonstrated the relevance of writing scores for the double bass in the orchestra separate from that of the cello, which was the common rule at the time. He is also remembered today for the Dragonetti bow, which he developed throughout his life.
Francesco Maria Veracini was an Italian composer and violinist, perhaps best known for his sets of violin sonatas. As a composer, according to Manfred Bukofzer, "His individual, if not subjective, style has no precedent in baroque music and clearly heralds the end of the entire era", while Luigi Torchi maintained that "he rescued the imperiled music of the eighteenth century", His contemporary, Charles Burney, held that "he had certainly a great share of whim and caprice, but he built his freaks on a good foundation, being an excellent contrapuntist". The asteroid 10875 Veracini was named after him.
Antonio Francisco Javier José Soler Ramos, usually known as Padre Antonio Soler, known in Catalan as Antoni Soler i Ramos was a Spanish composer whose works span the late Baroque and early Classical music eras. He is best known for his many mostly one-movement keyboard sonatas.
The Symphony No. 5 in D major/D minor, Op. 107, known as the Reformation, was composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1830 in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession. The Confession is a key document of Lutheranism and its Presentation to Emperor Charles V in June 1530 was a momentous event of the Protestant Reformation. This symphony was written for a full orchestra and was Mendelssohn's second extended symphony. It was not published until 1868, 21 years after the composer's death – hence its numbering as '5'. Although the symphony is not very frequently performed, it is better known today than when it was originally published. Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, chose the name Reformation Symphony.
Johann Georg Pisendel was a German Baroque violinist and composer who, for many years, led the Court Orchestra in Dresden as concertmaster, then the finest instrumental ensemble in Europe. He was the leading violinist of his time, and composers such as Tomaso Albinoni, Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi all dedicated violin compositions to him.
Georg Anton Benda was a composer, violinist and Kapellmeister of the classical period from the Kingdom of Bohemia.
The mandora or gallichon is a type of 18th- and early 19th-century lute, with six to nine courses of strings. The terms were interchangeable, with mandora more commonly used from the mid-18th century onwards.
Joseph Haydn wrote 123 trios for the unusual combination of baryton, viola and cello. Three further trios for baryton, cello and violin are considered part of the series. As Sisman notes, they are the “most intensively cultivated genre” of Haydn’s early career.
The colascione is a plucked string instrument from the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods, with a lute-like resonant body and a very long neck. It was mainly used in southern Italy. It has two or three strings tuned in fifths.
Jan Jiří Benda, also Johann Georg Benda, was a Bohemian violinist and composer active in Germany.
Dismas Hataš was a Bohemian composer and violinist of the early classical period.
Ghezzi developed a composition from the sketch that shows Domenico with his brother playing the guitar. A version of this representation came into the possession of Count Heinrich von Brühl. This version was used by Matthias Oesterreich as a sample for the present etching
Museum number1859,0806.108...The inscription on the present drawing states that the 'Bresciano' came to Rome...and played the two strings 'calascioncino' at the Teatro della Valle and at Ghezzi's musical academy...
Less exaulted households held gatherings dedicated to conversation, or dancing, or music. At mid-century the artist Cavaliere Ghezzi had regularly hosted a musical academy at which amateur and professional guests entertained one another with singing and instruments.
Captured by some of the pirates who infested the Mediterranean and sometimes even ventured into the English channel, the brothers had been kept prisoners in Algiers, a place known but little to English people in these days and of which many strange stories were told. The King of Poland, by whom they were released from their state of slavery, was the unhappy Stanislaus Augustus, the last monarch who occupied the throne of that ill-fated country.
Media related to Domenico Colla at Wikimedia Commons