Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.classica.mod
Titolo: Libretti d'Opera Inglesi

Volevo segnalarvi questo sito:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~rstack/Operas.html
E' una lista di Opere di compositori inglesi con relativi librettisti.
A parte i nomi famosi come Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Joseph Addison....
Volevo segnalarvi questa coppia Lewis Theobald e Colley Cibber.
Sono gli involontari protagonisti della "Dunciad" di Alexander Pope, in cui
il grande poeta satirico sbertucciava alcuni scrittorucoli e critici suoi
antagonisti, Theobald e Cibber appunto.
Cibber è considerato uno dei peggiori poeti inglesi di sempre, ma
evidentemente la sua fortuna come librettista era notevole.
I compositori piu frequentemente associati ai due sono: John Ernest Galliard
e John Christopher Pepusch.
Mi potete dare più informazioni su di loro ?
H.N.

 Mi potete dare più informazioni su di loro ?
Il Galliard per una prossima volta......
Pepusch, Johann Christoph
(b Berlin, 1667; d London, 20 July 1752). German composer and theorist. He
was the son of a Protestant minister and studied music theory under one
Klingenberg (probably not the son of the Stettin organist Friedrich Gottlieb
Klingenberg as Hawkins stated, but perhaps an elder relation), and practice
under Grosse, a Saxon organist. From the age of 14 he was employed at the
Prussian court, where he remained until about the end of the 17th century.
According to Hawkins he resolved to leave Germany after witnessing the
execution without trial of a Prussian officer accused of insubordination
â??and put himself under the protection of a government founded on better
principles’. After travelling through Holland, some time after September
1697 he settled in London, where he remained for the rest of his life; from
1707 he lived at Hooker’s (later Boswell) Court near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
He is known to have frequented the concerts of Thomas Britton at
Clerkenwell, and it was probably there that he became acquainted with the
poet and dramatist John Hughes, with whom he later collaborated in a number
of works. His first permanent employment in London was as a viola player,
and later harpsichordist at Drury Lane Theatre in 1704. His only stage work
from this period was the pasticcio Thomyris, Queen of Scythia, but he was
well known as a composer of instrumental music, much of it published in both
Amsterdam and London, and as a performer in and organizer of public and
private concerts.
In January 1708 he joined the opera company operating from Vanburgh’s Queen’
s Theatre in the Haymarket. There he served as violinist, harpsichordist,
and agent for the soprano Margherita de l’Epine. The German traveller
Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach described a concert he attended in June 1710
at which l’Epine sang, accompanied by members of the opera house band
directed by Pepusch from the harpsichord. Pepusch and l’Epine were married
some time between 1718 (the traditional date, but now impossible to
establish) and 1723; their only son, who died in July 1739 after showing
considerable talent and promise, was baptized on 9 January 1724.
In July 1713 Pepusch, along with William Croft, was awarded the degree of
DMus at Oxford; the music he submitted for this occasion, including the ode
Hail, queen of islands! Hail, illustrious fair, has not survived. In 1714
Pepusch moved to Drury Lane as musical director and over the next two
seasons contributed four essays in the genre of the English masque: Venus
and Adonis, Myrtillo and Laura, Apollo and Daphne and The Death of Dido.
These were intended as independent afterpieces, with plots that are
completely self-contained, interpolate no real element of comedy, and have a
tragic dénouement. In autumn 1716 he transferred to Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
where he served as musical director for much of the next 15 years but he
composed little of importance for the stage.
Sometime after this date Pepusch became involved with the musical
establishment of James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, and he was replaced by
John Ernest Galliard as musical director at Lincoln’s Inn Fields for the
1717–18 season. His presence at Cannons, Brydges’s estate near Edgware in
Middlesex, can be documented from as early as December 1717, and he and
George Frideric Handel were both there in April 1718. Although he was again
active at Lincoln’s Inn Fields for the 1718–19 season, Pepusch seems to have
been appointed musical director at Cannons in mid-1719 with a salary of £25
per quarter, perhaps as a consequence of Brydges’ reorganization of his
household on his elevation to the title of first Duke of Chandos in April of
that year. Pepusch was responsible for providing music for the duke’s chapel
and chamber on a regular basis until mid-1721, presumably dividing his time
between Cannons and his London house. After this date the duke cut back his
musical establishment in response to financial losses, but Pepusch continued
to provide occasional musicians from London until 1725, when organized
musical activity at Cannons seems to have ceased.
Pepusch provided two new works for the 1723–4 season at Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, The Union of the Three Sister Arts and a revision of Betterton’s The
Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian, and presumably conducted the band
for the famous series of pantomimes between 1723 and 1730 featuring the
theatre owner John Rich as Harlequin and music by Galliard. He was almost
certainly in charge for the opening night of John Gay’s famous satire The
Beggar’s Opera on 29 January 1728, for which he probably composed the
overture and may have arranged the airs (although the printed bass lines do
not reflect his elegance and technical skill). A sequel, Polly, was
published in 1729, but censorship prevented its performance on stage until
after Pepusch’s death. Pepusch probably retired from the theatre at the end
of the 1732–3 season and subsequently concentrated primarily on his
antiquarian interests.
In 1735, when he moved to Fetter Lane, Pepusch reorganized the Academy of
Ancient Music (of which he had been a founder-member in 1726) as a seminary
for the musical instruction of young boys. In December 1737 he was made
organist of the Charterhouse, and in 1745 (the year before his wife died) he
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to whom he delivered a paper ‘Of
the Various Genera and Species of Music Among the Ancients’. Throughout his
career he was much sought after as a teacher, his pupils including Boyce,
Benjamin Cooke, J.H. Roman, John Travers, George Berg, James Nares and
Ephraim Kellner. After his death Travers and Kellner shared with the Academy
of Ancient Music their master’s extensive and important library of books and
music, among which was the collection of virginal music now known as the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Largely as a result of Burney’s estimate of him, posterity has tended to
look upon Pepusch as an academic pedant who opposed Handel’s cause in
England. He was certainly the most learned musical antiquarian of his day,
but to regard him only in this way is to ignore the lively theatre music and
the elegant English cantatas, which are mostly carefully composed, but by no
means dry. And though the success of The Beggar’s Opera contributed to
Handel’s difficulties in promoting Italian opera for the Royal Academy,
there is no indication of any personal or professional enmity between the
two men. Even after 1728 Pepusch subscribed to publications of Handel’s
operas, and he also arranged performances of his music by the Academy of
Ancient Music.
The unprecedented popularity of The Beggar’s Opera, for which Pepusch may
have supplied only the basses and an overture that uses one of the opera’s
popular tunes, has tended to overshadow his own music. His earliest
surviving works are mostly instrumental and include well over 100 violin
sonatas and several recorder and flute sonatas. These are mostly modelled on
the four-movement plan of Corelli, whose sonatas and concertos Pepusch later
edited for publication in London. Particularly interesting are the
manuscript sets of sonatas composed for various English violinists, each
containing 16 works in as many different keys, thus anticipating (and going
beyond) the similar arrangement of Bach’s two- and three-part Inventions.
(Pepusch included B major in addition to the keys that Bach used.)
Most, if not all, of Pepusch’s church music was written for the Duke of
Chandos. It consists mainly of verse anthems in which soloists and chorus
alternate, often with quite elaborate instrumental accompaniment. The
Magnificat is similarly composed, though on a larger scale, and may well
have been written to celebrate the opening of the chapel at Cannons in
August 1720. Some anthems exist in versions for male voices and continuo,
which may reflect the economies forced upon the duke in the 1720s, or
possibly performances at the Academy of Ancient Music after the boys of St
Paul’s and the Chapel Royal had been withdrawn in 1731. Some of Pepusch’s
most attractive vocal writing is found in the secular cantatas, written,
according to Hughes’s preface to the first printed collection, ‘as an
Experiment of introducing a sort of Composition which had never been
naturaliz’d in our Language’. Pepusch’s cantatas are italianate in their
structure of two arias separated (and usually preceded) by recitative and in
the almost invariable use of the da capo form, but the music itself often
tends towards the kind of English tunefulness that kept his most famous
cantata, Alexis, popular for over a century. Alexis is for voice and
continuo only, but most of the other cantatas include an obbligato
instrument, which Pepusch combined in skilful counterpoints with the voice
and bass. Many cantatas were sung as interludes in the theatre, but some at
least were designed for more intimate performance. Four out of the six
cantatas in the second printed volume (dedicated to the Duke of Chandos)
include a part for solo recorder (fig.2) and were probably performed at
Cannons.
Pepusch’s writing in his masques is intentionally italianate, with da capo
arias, secco recitatives and typical Italian instrumentation using strings
and woodwind; there is hardly any use of chorus or dances. These masques, in
particular the longest and most successful, Venus and Adonis, are virtually
operatic presentations in miniature.
Pepusch seems to have retired from composition after about 1729 and devoted
himself mainly to the study and performance of ancient music. His most
important theoretical work, A Treatise on Harmony, was published anonymously
in 1730, possibly at the instigation of his pupil, Viscount Paisley, and
revised the following year. It represents a last-ditch attempt to restore
solmization as a basis for the instruction of harmonic theory.
Pepusch’s brother Heinrich Gottfried (d 1750), an oboist employed by the
Elector of Brandenburg, visited London in 1704; no compositions by him are
known.
Pepusch, Johann Christoph
WORKS
thematic catalogue in Cook (1982)
dramatic
all performed in London; all printed works published in London
Thomyris, Queen of Scythia (pasticcio, P.A. Motteux), Drury Lane, 1 April
1707; recits ? arr. Pepusch; songs (c1719)
Venus and Adonis (masque, C. Cibber, after Ovid: Metamorphoses), Drury Lane,
12 March 1715; score and parts GB-Lcm, songs (1716)
Myrtillo and Laura (pastoral masque, Cibber), Drury Lane, 5 Nov 1715; score
Lam, frags. Bu, Cfm, Ob
Apollo and Daphne (masque, J. Hughes), Drury Lane, 12 Jan 1716; score Lcm,
frags. Lam, Ob, US-Wc
The Death of Dido (masque, B. Booth, after Virgil: Aeneid), Drury Lane, 17
April 1716; GB-Lam
The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian (op with spoken dialogue, T.
Betterton and J. Dryden, after J. Fletcher and P. Massinger), Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, 28 Nov 1724, music lost
Alexis and Dorinda (afterpiece), Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 15 April 1725, music
lost, ?by Pepusch
The Beggar’s Opera (ballad op, J. Gay), Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 29 Jan 1728; ?
airs arr. Pepusch, ? ov. by Pepusch (1728/R)
The Wedding (ballad op, E. Hawker), Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 6 May 1729; ov. by
Pepusch (1729)
Polly (ballad opera, 3, Gay), Little Theatre, Haymarket, 19 June 1777; ? by
Pepusch (1729); 1777 score arr. S. Arnold, US-CAh
Songs and other music for various stage works in GB-Lam, Och and pubd singly
and in 18th-century anthologies
Doubtful: music in Marsaniello, or A Fisherman Prince, Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
29 March 1729; prelude, songs Lam [revival of T. D’Urfey: The History of the
Rise and Fall of Marsaniello]
odes
Ye gen’rous arts and muses join [Britannia and Augusta] (J. Hughes), in
honour of the Duke of Devonshire, 1707, 2 S, 2 rec, 2 ob, 2 vn, va, bn, bc,
B-Bc, GB-Lbl
Hail, queen of islands! Hail, illustrious fair [Peace, Apollo and Britain],
for Peace of Utrecht, 1713, music lost, text in Gu
Fame and Isis joined in one [Ocean’s Glory, or A Parley of Rivers],
coronation of George I, 1714, ?unperf., music lost, text in D’Urfey: Wit and
Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, i (London, 1719)
To joy, to triumphs [Fame and Cambria] (Hughes), for birthday of Princess of
Wales, 1716, 2 S, tpt, rec, ob, hp, 2 vn, va, vc, bc, 1716, Lam, Lcm
Great Phoebus, who in thy unwearied race, for St Cecilia’s Day, S, A, 2 T,
B, SSATB, ob, tpt, 2 vn, va, bc, Lam, ?by Pepusch
other secular vocal
cantatas unless otherwise stated; some of those in collections also
published separately
6 English Cantatas, bk 1 (London, 1710/R), texts by Hughes:
Airy Cloe, proud and young [Cloe], S, 2 ob, 2 vn, va, bc; As beauty’s
goddess [The Island of Beauty], S, bc; Fragrant Flora, hast, appear! [The
Spring], S, vn, bc; Miranda’s tunefull voice and fame [Miranda], S, vn, bc;
See! from the silent groves [Alexis], S/T, bc [vc, kbd]; While Corydon the
lovely shepherd [Corydon], S, rec; bc
6 English Cantatas, bk 2 (London, 1720/R):
Cleora sat beneath a shade (J. Slaughter), S, rec, bc; Kindly fate at length
release me (L. Theobald), S, tpt, 2 vn, va, bc; Love frowns in beauteous
Myra’s eyes (Myra, Hughes), S, rec, bc; Menalcas once the gayest swain
(Gee), S, rec, bc; When loves soft passion (J. Blackley), S, rec, bc; While
pale Britannia pensive sate [Britannia] (Cibber), S, tpt, 2 vn, va, bc
2 cants. in 12 Cantatas in English … by Several Authors (London, c1720):
On fam’d Arcadia’s flow’ry plains (pastoral, Hughes), S, ob, bc;
The god of love had lost his bow, S, bc
The Union of the Three Sister Arts (musical entertainment, ?Walsh), S, T, B,
SATB, 2 ob, 2 vn, va, bc, 1723, frag. GB-Ckc, songs (1723)
An hapless shepherd, S, 2 vn, bc, GB-Bu;
Crudel, ingrata, S, hpd, vc, Lbl; Fonte adorato, A, bc, Lbl; Hymen, source
of human bliss, S, A, T, B, SATB, ob, 2 vn, va, bc, Lam ?by Pepusch; No, no,
vain world [The Meditation], 2 S, 2 rec, 2 ob, vn solo, 2 vn, va, bc, perf.
in The Lady Jane Gray (play, N. Rowe), 1715; Lam, Lcm; S’io peno e gemo, S,
ob, bc, Lcm; Twas on the eve, S, bc, Lcm; Victorious Caelia charming fair,
S, A, SATB, 2 vn ,va, bc, Lam ?by Pepusch; Vorrei scoprir, S, vn, bc, Lcm;
Wake th’ harmonious voice and string (serenata, Hughes), for the marriage of
Lord Cobham to Mrs Anne Halsey, 2 S, ob, rec, 2 vn, va, bc, Lam, Lcm
Lost, cited in Chandos library inventory of Aug 1720, see Baker:
A severa battaglia; Mirar il caro ogetto; Non ti bastava, oh Clori;
Strephon, young uncautious boy, 1v, insts; Sur les flots inquiets de la mer,
1v, bc; The muses once to Phoebus came, 1v, insts
Lost, texts in J. Hughes, Poems on Several Occasions With Some Select Essays
in Prose (London, 1735):
Foolish love! I scorn thy darts; On silver Tyber’s vocal shore [Cupid and
Scarlatti]; Why too amorous heroe [The Soldier in Love]; Young Strephon by
his folded sheep
Other lost cants., cited in LS
Doubtful: As Silvia in a forest lay [Sylvia’s Moan], madrigal, SATB, Lam,
Lms
sacred vocal
Mag, S, A, T, B, SATB, ob, bn, tpt, 2 vn, va, vc/db, org, before Oct 1721,
?autograph GB-Lbl
Motets: Beatus vir, SATB, Lbl, Lcm; Laetatus sum, SATB, Lcm; Te aeternum
Patrem, SAT, US-Wc
Anthems: Blessed is the man, S, S, A, T, B/SATTB, 2 vn solo, 2 vn, va,
vc/db, bc, GB-Lam; I will magnifie thee O Lord, T/TTB, bc, Lam; Lord Thou
art become gracious, S, A, T, B/SAATB, ob, tpt, 2 vn, va, vc/db, bc, before
Aug 1720, Lam; O be joyfull in God, A/SATB, ob, 2 vn, db, vc, Lbl, rev. for
S, S, A, T, B/SATB, ob, 2 vn, va, vc, org, before Aug 1720, Lam; O give
thanks, S, A, B/SATB, ob, 3 vn, b, before Aug 1720, Ob; O praise the Lord,
S, bc, in J. Weldon, Divine Harmony: 6 Select Anthems (London, 1716–17); O
praise the Lord, A, A, B/SATB, 2 bn/vc, bc, Lcm, LF, Ob; O praise the Lord,
T, B/TTTB, bc, Lam; O sing unto the Lord, S, S, B, 2 vn, org, Lbl, rev. for
SSATB, 2 vn, va, b, before Aug 1720, Lwa, Ob; Rejoyce in the Lord, S, A, T,
T, B/SATB, fl, ob, tpt, 2 vn, va, bc, before Aug 1720, Lam
I will magnifie thee O God, S, unison vv, 2 vn, bc, arr. of Bassani’s motet
Alligeri amores, Cfm, Lbl, Och, WO
Lost anthems, cited in Chandos library inventory of Aug 1720, see Baker and
Beeks (1993): O come let us sing, SSB, insts; The Lord is King, SATB, insts
Lost anthems, cited in Chapel Royal workbook of 1749: I will give thanks
unto thee; O God, thou art my God
instrumental
op. [1] VI sonates, rec, bc [kbd/bn] (Amsterdam, 1705–6); as Six Sonatas or
Solos (London, 1707); ed. F.J. Giesbert (Mainz, 1939), ed. in Moecks
Kammersmusik, xi, xxi–xxiii (Celle, 1939)
2 [16] Sonates, vn, bc, pts 1–2 (Amsterdam, 1707), incl. in XXIV Solos
(London, 1708)
— A Second Set of [6] Solos, rec, bc [bn/b rec/hpd/org] (London, 1709); ed.
H. Ruf (Mainz, 1963), ed. W. Hess (Winterthur, 1982)
— Airs, 2 vn (London, 1709), for 2 rec (London, 1709)
3 XII sonates, 2 vn/ob/fl, bc [org/vc] (Amsterdam, before Oct 1711), 11 in
Twelve Sonatas in Parts … Corrected by Mr Wm Corbett (London, 1710); 6 ed.
in Mitteldeutsches Musikarchiv, 2/i–ii (1955–7)
4 XII sonates, vn, vc/bc (Amsterdam, before Oct 1711), lost, advertised in
Post-Man, 16 October 1711
5 X sonates, vn, bc (Amsterdam, c1711–12) [pt 3 of op.2], 8 in XXIV Solos
(London, 1708)
6 X sonates, vn, bc (Amsterdam, c1711–12) [pt 4 of op.2]
7 X sonates, nos.1–8 for fl/ob, vn, bc, no.9 for fl, va da gamba, bc, no.10
for rec, fl, bc (Amsterdam, c1717–18), lost, listed in Le Cene catalogue,
1737
8 VI concerts, 2 rec, 2 fl/ob/vn, bc (Amsterdam, c1717–18) [not all playable
with this scoring]; ed. D. Lasocki (London, 1974)
Concerto grosso, D, tpt, str, D-ROu, ed. G. Blechert (Leipzig, 1980);
Sinfonia à 5, G, 2 fl, 2 vn, bc, ROu; concerto ‘Partie Englitair’, C, vn, 3
ob, bc, SWl; concerto grosso, a, 4 vn, va, b, GB-Ob; 5 concerto grossi, G,
D, F, F, e, 1/2 vn, str, D-Dl; concerto grosso, D, 2 vn, str, POTh; 2
concertos, a, d, 2 vn, va, b, US-Wc; concerto grosso, G, vn, str, bc, S-Uu;
concerto grosso, str, B, GB-Lbl; Concerto grosso, A, vn, 2 vn, va, b, Lam
Lost concs.: 5 for tpt, ob, 4 vn, va, b; 4 in six pts; 1 for ob, insts; 3
for unspecified insts; all cited in Chandos library inventory of Aug 1720,
see Baker; 1 for flageolet, insts, 1717, and others perf. in London theatres
and concert halls, see LS
43 Trio sonatas, 20 for 2 vn, bc, 20 for other combinations, 3 for 2 tr
insts, b, D-Dl, ROu, GB-Lam, Lbl, Lcm, Och, US-R, Wc
6 sets of 16 solos or sonatas, vn, b viol/hpd, B-Bc, D-Bsb according to
Eitner, GB-CDp, Lbl, S-Uu, US-R [12 from set 2 pubd in opp.5 and 6]; 8 solos
or sonatas, vn, b viol/hpd, J-Tn; 16 solos or sonatas, vn, b viol/hpd, B-Bc;
5 Select Sonatas, ?vn, bc, US-R; other sonatas, vn, bc, GB-Ckc, Lbl, Lcm,
Mp; sonatas or solos, fl, bc [some also for vn], D-ROu, GB-Lcm, BENcoke;
sonata, ob/vn, bc, D-ROu; other sonatas pubd singly or in 18th-century
anthologies
Miscellaneous pieces, kbd, B-Bc, GB-BENcoke, Cu, Lam, Lbl, Lco, Ldc, Mp, Ob,
US-NYp
theoretical works
Rules, or A Short and Compleate Method for Attaining to Play a Thorough Bass
upon the Harpsichord or Organ, by an Eminent Master [?J.C. Pepusch] (London,
c1730)
A Treatise on Harmony: Containing the Chief Rules for Composing in Two,
Three and Four Parts (London, 1730, 2/1731/R)
‘Of the Various Genera and Species of Music Among the Ancients’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, xliv (1746), 266–75
A Short Account of the Twelve Modes of Composition and their Progression in
Every Octave (MS, 1751), lost
EDITIONS
The Score of the 4 Setts of Sonatas … Compos’d by A. Corelli … the Whole
Carefully Corrected by Several Most Eminent Masters, and Revis’d by Dr
Pepusch (London, 1732)
The Score of the 12 Concertos … compos’d by Arcangelo Corelli … the Whole
Carefully Corrected by Several Most Eminent Masters, and Revis’d by Dr
Pepusch (London, 1732)

 Pepusch, Johann Christoph
(cut)
GULP !
Grazie, esiste un sito dove prendere informazioni cosě dettagliate ?
Tanto per non rompere.
H.N.

 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:ap8brr$gqi$1...@attila.bofh.it...

no, purtroppo.
A meno di pagare............
(puoi abbonarti al New Grove online)
A.