Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809) - Sonata No.1 (c.1790)
Channel: Pau NG
Date: 2019-09-13

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Composer: Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809)
Work: Sonata No.1 in D (c.1790)
Performers: WiIIiаm Grаnt (piano)

Painting: James Peale (1749-1831) - Still Life with Pears, Grapes and Autumn Leaves

Further info: https://www.amazon.com/Alexandre-Reinagle-Christoher-Moller-Hewitt/dp/B000KQ2CSW
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Ns4DHolg4OBDu0U6b8gZX

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Alexander Reinagle
(Portsmouth, bap. 23 April 1756 - Baltimore, 21 September 1809)

Composer, pianist and teacher, son of Joseph Reinagle. He was a pupil of his father and of Raynor Taylor, musical director of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh where Reinagle made his first known public appearance on 9 April 1770, playing a harpsichord sonata. By 1778 he was teaching the harpsichord in Glasgow, and his interest in keyboard teaching is reflected in his first publications, two sets of 24 ‘short and easy’ pieces. About 1782 he brought out A Collection of … Scots Tunes with Variations for harpsichord. His six sonatas for piano or harpsichord with violin accompaniment (London, 1783), resemble the styles of Clementi and J.C. Bach while occasionally exhibiting surprising originality. Reinagle visited C.P.E. Bach in Hamburg (c1784), and a brief correspondence between the two ensued. He accompanied his brother Hugh Reinagle to Portugal, arriving in Lisbon on 23 October 1784 (his memorandum of the journey is in US-Wc); on 8 January 1785 he appeared in a public concert and a week later performed for the royal family. After Hugh’s death Alexander returned to England and became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians in London. In late spring 1786 Reinagle arrived in New York, advertising himself as a teacher of the piano, harpsichord and violin; he gave a concert there on 20 July 1786. Two months later he was in Philadelphia, where on 21 September 1786 he took part in a concert given by the cellist Henri Capron. Reinagle settled there and revived the defunct City Concerts with a series of 12 evenings during the 1786–7 season. The programmes listed orchestral works by European composers of the time and works by Reinagle himself. He was in demand as a music teacher to Philadelphia’s upper class (George Washington engaged him to teach his adopted daughter, Nelly Custis) and brought out in rapid succession four publications probably intended for use in teaching: a smaller edition of his Scots Tunes variations, two collections of song arrangements, and a collection of instrumental pieces arranged for keyboard. He gave many concerts, appearing not only in Philadelphia but also in New York (1788–9), Baltimore (1791) and Boston (1792). From 1790 or 1791 Reinagle was a partner with the English actor Thomas Wignell (d 1803) and Wignell’s successors in a theatrical company operating in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The New Company, as it was called, erected theatres in Philadelphia (the New Theatre in Chestnut Street, February 1793) and Baltimore (Holliday Street Theater, September 1794). The company’s repertory was divided equally between spoken and musical works, the latter usually English light opera or ballet. In his 15 years with the company Reinagle composed or arranged music for hundreds of productions, the extent of his responsibility ranging from a single incidental song to a completely new score, or the orchestration of an existing score. Nearly all this music perished in the fire that destroyed the Philadelphia New Theatre on 2 April 1820. The largest surviving fragment of any of Reinagle’s stage works is a collection of 14 songs from The Volunteers, printed in a piano reduction in 1795. Typical of ballad opera numbers, they are mostly strophic and written to a binary pattern framed by an instrumental introduction and coda.