Alexandro Marie Antoin Fridzeri

Last updated

Alexandro Marie Antoin Fridzeri or Frixer (born Verona 16 January 1741, died Antwerp 1825) was the most renowned of mandolin virtuosi, a clever violinist, organist, and a composer whose works met with popular favor. Among his works were sonatas and chamber music and operas. His life began and ended with tragic notes, losing his eyesight and later his home and possessions. Music historian Philip J. Bone called Fridzeri " an artist of undoubted genius and a man of most remarkable character, which was fully tried under great adversity." The late Giuseppe Bellenghi, mandolinist and composer, dedicated his variations for mandolin and piano on the Carnival of Venice, to the memory of Fridzeri, the blind mandolin player and composer. [1]

Contents

Blind boy

He lost his eyesight in a childhood accident and the loss of this sense only quickened and intensified others. He was taken with music at an early age and was taught singing and the elements of music while a child. However, apart from this first elementary instruction Fridzeri was self-taught in all the branches of the art, both practical and theoretical. He had learned to play the mandolin by age 11 and constructed his own instrument. He mastered the mandolin enough by that point to be engaged as singing boy at the fashionable serenades, which were customary and exceedingly popular among the nobility of Italy, accompanying himself with his mandolin. Fidzeri had a good voice and his stage presence—a blind boy singing romances, accompanied by his mandolin—was a pleasure to these select assemblies. [1]

Traveling musician

Fridzeri also devoted himself to the study of other musical instruments and excelled in his performances upon the violin, flute, viol d'amour and organ. When he reached twenty years of age, he was appointed organist of the cathedral of the Madonna del Monte Berico, Vicenza, and he moved there from Verona with his parents to take up this position. For the space of about three years he remained as organist of this celebrated cathedral, and then commenced an exceedingly romantic and checkered career. At the age of twenty-four he left home with a companion and toured Europe as a blind mandolin virtuoso. His repertoire consisted of the concertos of Tartini, the principal works of Pugnani and Ferrari, and several of his own compositions. They travelled through the north of Italy and central France, ultimately reaching Paris, towards the close of the same year (c. 1762). [1]

Fridzeri met with success and received great applause wherever he performed during his travels. However, in Paris he was not encouraged by his reception; the mandolin was not as popular as in Italy, and he turned to the violin. He appeared as violin soloist at the famous Concerts Spirituels and performed with brilliant success a concerto of Pierre Gaviniès and his own two concertos for violin, Op. 5. Then he took up residence in Paris for two years, teaching the mandolin and violin, after which he made a long concert tour through the north of France, Belgium and the Rhineland of Germany. Fridzeri found popularity in Strasburg and he resided there for twelve months, writing his first two operas, which were produced at the Comedie Italienne in Paris when he returned to France. [1]

Settling and composing

He returned to Paris by 1771, engaged in writing incidental music for the Parisian theaters and also numerous string quartets and mandolin sonatas. Towards the end of that year he left Paris again, this time for Brittany, where he had been appointed private musician to the Count Châteaugiron,and with whom he remained for twelve years. During this time he applied himself in his leisure principally to operatic composition, and undertook periodical visits to Paris to superintend the production of his new stage works. Finding a demand for this class of composition he terminated his service as private musician to Count Chateaugiron and again took up his residence in Paris. Then the French Revolution began in 1789, and he fled to Nantes, where he established an academy of music and was once more employed in teaching. [1]

French civil war

For five years the blind musician was thus actively engaged in Nantes until the terrors of the civil war in Vendée and there was wholesale massacre Nantes too. He fled back to Paris for refuge. On his return he was elected a member of the "Lycee de Arts," 1794, and commenced a music printing business in the Rue Saint Nicaise, near the Palais-Royal. Although his business quickly failed, he did published his opera, Les souliers mordores there. In spite of that, it was the beginning of ill fortune, for in December 1801 a bomb was hurled at the Palaise Royal and its explosion totally destroyed all Fridzeri's possessions. He wasn't alone; the unsettled state of fifteen thousand persons perished in one month. The French government of this year compelled the blind musician, now sixty years of age and reduced to poverty, to leave France. He began to wander again, with his two daughters — both musicians. With them, the elder a violinist and the younger vocalist, they travelled through Belgium and settled in Antwerp where the daughters followed the vocation of their father and established a music and musical instrument business. The business continued until the death of Fridzeri. [1]

Works

His opera, Les deux miliciens(The two soldiers), established his reputation as a musician and writer of music which was at once melodious and brilliant, and his published works, though not numerous, embrace nearly every variety of musical composition. The following are the principal: [1]

Related Research Articles

Mandolin Musical instrument in the lute family

A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a plectrum. It most commonly has four courses of doubled metal strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 strings, although five and six course versions also exist. 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.

Tomaso Albinoni Italian composer

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was an Italian Baroque composer. His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is also remembered today for a work called "Adagio in G minor", attributed to him but said to be written by Remo Giazotto, a 20th century musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni.

Johann Schobert

Johann Schobert was a composer and harpsichordist. His date of birth is given variously as about 1720, about 1735, or about 1740, his place of birth as Silesia, Alsace, or Nuremberg. He died after eating poisonous mushrooms that he insisted were edible.

The year 1727 in music involved some significant events.

Ferdinand Ries

Ferdinand Ries was a German composer. Ries was a friend, pupil and secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, nine piano concertos, three operas, and numerous other works, including 26 string quartets. In 1838 he published a collection of reminiscences of his teacher Beethoven, co-written with Franz Wegeler. The symphonies, some chamber works—most of them with piano—his violin concerto and his piano concertos have been recorded, exhibiting a style which, given his connection to Beethoven, lies between the Classical and early Romantic styles.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was a French baroque composer of instrumental music, cantatas, opéra-ballets, and vocal music. Boismortier was one of the first composers to have no patrons: having obtained a royal licence for engraving music in 1724, he made enormous sums of money by publishing his music for sale to the public.

Michel Blavet was a French composer and flute virtuoso. Although Blavet taught himself to play almost every instrument, he specialized in the bassoon and the flute which he held to the left, the opposite of how most flutists hold theirs today.

Jean-Marie Leclair

Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné was a French Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers, the lesser-known Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77) as well as Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair, were also musicians.

Giovanni Battista Cirri

Giovanni Battista Cirri was an Italian cellist and composer in the 18th century.

Jean-Baptiste Bréval

Jean-Baptiste Sebastien Bréval was a French cellist and composer. He wrote mostly pieces for his own instrument, and performed many world premières of his own pieces.

Nicolas Bacri French composer

Nicolas Bacri is a French composer. He has written works that include seven symphonies, eleven string quartets, eight cantatas, two one-act operas, three piano sonatas, two cello and piano sonatas, four violin and piano sonatas, six piano trios, four violin concertos and numerous other concertante works.

Jacques Aubert, also known as Jacques Aubert le Vieux, was a French composer and violinist of the Baroque period.

Frédéric Blasius

Frédéric Blasius was a French violinist, clarinetist, conductor, and composer. Born MatthäusBlasius, he used Frédéric as his pen name on his publications in Paris.

Federigo Fiorillo was a mandolinist and composer, who wrote thirty-six caprices for violin, also called études.

Isidore Bertheaume was a French classical composer and violinist.

Jean-Baptiste Davaux French classical violinist and composer (1742–1822)

Jean-Baptiste Davaux was a French classical violinist and composer.

Nicolas Capron was a French classical violinist and composer.

Gabriele Leone

Gabriele Leone was an Italian musician and composer who lived in Paris during the middle and later part of the 18th century. A virtuoso on the violin and mandolin, he wrote an early mandolin method, Analytical method for mastering the violin or the mandolin in 1768 and composed for both instruments. He was an early teacher of the duo method, an advanced technique which would reappear in the 20th century, taught by Giuseppe Pettine in the United States.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.