Federico Moretti y Cascone (1769-1839) - Fantasía, Variazioni e Coda
Channel: Pau NG
Date: 2024-01-22

Muchas felicidades Federico Moretti! 👑🍷

Composer: Federico Moretti y Cascone (1769-1839)
Work: Fantasía, Variazioni, e Coda per Chitarra sola Sul Tema del Rondó della Cenerentola Non più mesta accanto al fuoco del Maestro Rossini ... Op. 27
Performers: Thomas Schmіtt (guitar)

Painting: Domingo de Aguirre (1741-1805) - La Villa y Corte de Madrid vista desde las alturas del camino de San Bernardino (1780)
HD image: https://flic.kr/p/2ptGL3n

Further info: https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Music-6-Course-Guitar-Around/dp/B00CPCEQ7O
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ehfist9sUGLJ2LCgTbuHt

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Federico Moretti y Cascone
(Naples, 22 January 1769 - Madrid, 17 January 1839)

Spanish composer, theorist and performer widely acknowledged as a key figure in the development of the modern notational system for guitar. Son of Pietro Moretti (1722-1784) and Rosa Cascone (c.1732-1791), his family belonged to the Florentine nobility and had a long tradition of service to the Spanish Monarchy. He first studied with Domenico Cimarosa and Fedele Finaroli and then with Girolamo Masi. In 1794, he moved to Spain apparently under fear that Naples, then involved in the War of the First Coalition, was to fall under French rule. When Naples signed peace with France in 1796, he joined the Spanish army as a regular cadet in the Reales Guardias Walonas while still pursuing his musical career. In 1799, he published in Madrid his 'Principios para tocar la guitarra de seis ordenes, precedidos de los elementos generales de la música', dedicated to the queen María Luisa de Parma, wife of Carlos IV. In 1800 he was promoted and destined first to Campo de Gibraltar and then to the Balearic islands where he participated in the re-seizure of Mahon (Minorca) from the British. During this campaign it is believed that he entered in contact with captain Estanislao Solano, a keen guitarist who started to perform some of his composition in social gatherings attended by Fernando Sor who was influenced by his work. In his return to Italy, he was admitted, on 28 April 1805, in the prestigious Philharmonic Academy of Bologna. Few months later he returned to Spain where he continued progressing in the military career. In 1816, he moved to Madrid where he was awarded the Royal Military Order of San Hermenegildo. 

A year later, with the support of the Real Sociedad Económica Matritense which he had just joined and aided by the leading  musical chalcographer Bartolome Wirmbs, he established the first modern musical publishing house in Spain. In 1820, he married Bárbara Sánchez Andrade with whom he had been living in Madrid for four years; they had no children. A year later, and amid the turmoil of the Liberal Trienium, he published for beginners the 'Gramática Razonada Musical' (1821) dedicated to the younger brother of the King, the infante Francisco de Paula. He was awarded that year the Royal and Military Order of San Fernando. Having avoided collaborating with the liberal regime, he had little trouble in returning to royal favour after the Restoration. In 1824, he published the 'Sistema Uniclave o ensayo sobre uniformar las claves de la música sujetándolas a una sola escala' (1824). In 1828, he published a dictionary of military terms in Spanish and French on which he had been working since 1810 and that he dedicated to King Fernando VII who ordered its publication by the royal press. A year later he was promoted to the rank of mariscal de campo. In 1831 he published a translation into Spanish of Angelo Morigi’s 'Trattato di contrappunto fugato (Tratado del contrapunto fugado) and around the same time the 'Cuadro general melódico comparativo de la extension de todos los ynstrumetnos de viento y de cuerda y de las cuatro voces fundamentals' (c.1831). Although suffering from a Parkinson-style syndrome, in the years leading to his death, he published a number of popular songs. He died in Madrid on 17 January 1839, the same year than his colleague and admirer Fernando Sor.

Source: https://hispanic-anglosphere.com/individuals/moretti-federico-1769-1839/