Instrumentalist

[Anet, Jean-Jacques-Baptiste]

(b Paris, Jan 2, 1676; d Lunéville, Aug 14, 1755). French violinist and composer. His father was Jean-Baptiste Anet. About 1695–6 he travelled to Rome and studied under Corelli who, according to contemporary reports, was so pleased with Baptiste’s performance of his music that he ‘embraced him tenderly and made him a present of his bow’, and subsequently regarded him as an adopted son. During 1699 and 1700 Baptiste travelled through Germany to Poland. On his return he entered the service of the Duke of Orléans, a position he abandoned after about a year to enter that of the Elector Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria who, having lost his throne, was living in exile in France.

His début at the French court on 23 October 1701 attracted the notice of the Parisian newspaper Le mercure galant:

After his supper, the king heard in his study an exquisite concert of Italian airs, performed by Messrs Forqueray on the viol, Couperin at the harpsichord, and the young Baptiste (who is in the service of the Duke of Orléans) on the violin. The king appeared surprised at the excellence of the latter whom he had not yet heard....

[Stephan Carl Philipp ]

(bap. Hanover, April 30, 1716; d ?London, after 1775). German composer and instrumentalist . He was the only son and eldest child of Bartholomäus Barbandt (b Hanover, 3 July 1687; d Hanover, 6 May 1764), a musician of the court orchestra at Hanover, and Maria Catharina Barbandt (née Caligari). The first member of the Barbandt family to settle in Hanover seems to have been Joseph, Bartholomäus's father, who, according to records of the parish of St Clemens, Hanover, had come from Modena. Charles followed the example of his grandfather and father and became a member of the Hanoverian court orchestra. Although records do not indicate which instruments he played there, it is likely that he was employed mainly as a woodwind player, as later he often appeared as an oboist, flautist and clarinettist. The exact date of his entry into the orchestra is unknown, but he is listed in its payrolls until ...

(b Montferrand, nr Clermont-Ferrand, Oct 1675; d Clermont, Aug 1759). French amateur lutenist. He compiled an important late source of French Baroque lute music. During the final decade of the 17th century, following his law studies in Orléans, he was in Paris, where he probably received lute lessons. He was back in Clermont by 1703, the date of his nomination to the Cour des Aydes. Like Vaudry de Saizenay's manuscripts, Barbe's lutebook is a large retrospective anthology containing a wide assortment of 17th-century masterworks. Representative composers include Bocquet, Du But (père and fils), Du Fault, Hémond, Mouton and Pinel. It was formerly in the possession of Henri Prunières, and is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Rés.Vmb.7; facs. (Geneva, 1985), see Chauvel).

[Theofil]

(b Breslau, Feb 17, 1696; d Berlin, April 12, 1760). German lutenist, composer and writer on music. Neither Baron’s life nor his works have as yet been fully explored by scholars. His father Michael was a maker of gold lace and expected his son to follow in his footsteps. The younger Baron showed an inclination towards music in his youth, however, and later made it his profession. He first studied the lute from about 1710 with a Bohemian named Kohott (not to be confused with the later Karl von Kahaut). In Breslau he attended the Elisabeth Gymnasium, and from there went in 1715 to Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and law at the university for four years.

Much of the period from 1719 to 1728 was spent in travels from one small court to another. He first visited Halle for a short period, then in quick succession Cöthen, Schleiz, Saalfeld and Rudolstadt. He arrived in Jena in ...

(fl 1708–39). English composer, recorder player and cellist. From 1708 to 1714 he and his brother Thomas (fl 1708–27), a violinist and probably also a recorder player, played in concerts at Stationers' Hall and Coachmakers' Hall, London, and at Greenwich. When the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre opened in 1714, they probably became members of its orchestra; they performed there regularly in the interval ‘entertainments’, often in Baston's own recorder concertos, which have prominent solo violin parts. By 1722 he had moved to the rival Drury Lane Theatre, where he played in the interval music (and occasionally within the plays) until 1733, always in a concerto or solo for the ‘little flute’ (recorder); the concertos are twice named in advertisements as being by Dieupart and Robert Woodcock. In 1727 he (cello) and his brother (violin) were among the orchestra that played in the Lord Mayor's Day Royal Entertainments. Baston was one of the original subscribers to the Society of Musicians in ...

[l'aîné]

(b late 17th century; d Versailles, ?1728). French luthier and player on the musette and hurdy-gurdy. As early as 1672 Borjon de Scellery remarked upon the popularity of the musette among the French noblemen and the hurdy-gurdy among noble ladies. Bâton l'aîné took advantage of the continuing fashion for rustic instruments, and worked at transforming the musette and hurdy-gurdy from folk instruments into art ones. His younger contemporary Terrasson wrote:

Mr Bâton, luthier at Versailles, was the first who worked at perfecting the hurdy-gurdy [vielle]: he had in his place several old guitars which had not been used for a long time. In 1716 the idea struck him to turn them into hurdy-gurdies, and he carried off this invention with such a great success that people wished to have only hurdy-gurdies mounted on the bodies of guitars; and these sorts of hurdy-gurdies effectively have a stronger and at the same time sweeter sound than that of the old hurdy-gurdies. Mr Bâton also added to that instrument’s keyboard the low ...

[not Jean-Baptiste]

(b Lunel, 1710; d Paris, Dec 1, 1772). French haute-contre singer, music teacher, cellist and composer. His début in 1733 at the Paris Opéra, according to La Borde, was in the monologue of Pélée, ‘Ciel! en voyant ce temple redoutable’ from Act 3 of Collasse's Thétis et Pélée (1689). He soon joined the Italian troupe, performing in divertissements between the acts of operas. After three years he returned to the Opéra and took several minor roles between 1737 and 1745 in Rameau's works: Un Athlète in Castor et Pollux (1737), Un Songe in Dardanus (1739), Lycurgue in Fêtes d'Hébé (1739), and Tacmas (replacing the well-known haute-contre Tribou) in the third entrée of Les Indes galantes (1743 revival). In 1743 he sang the title role in the première of Boismortier's ballet-comique, Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, with the famous soprano Marie Fel as Altisidore. Two years later he retired from the opera to devote himself to teaching and playing the cello. He became first cellist of the orchestra at the Comédie-Italienne in ...

(b Mantes-la-Jolie, 5/June 6, 1665; d Paris, July 6, 1734). French composer, harpsichordist, theorist and teacher. He probably learnt music in the maîtrise of the collegiate church of Notre Dame, Mantes, and in that of Evreux Cathedral. According to the Etat actuel de la Musique du Roi (1773) he then studied with Caldara in Rome. In 1692 Bernier was living in the rue Tiquetonne in Paris and was teaching the harpsichord. On 20 November 1693 he failed to win the post of maître de musique at Rouen Cathedral in competition with Jean-François Lalouette. He was appointed head of the maîtrise of Chartres Cathedral on 17 September 1694 and remained there until 18 March 1698, when he obtained a similar position at St Germain-l'Auxerrois, Paris. A Te Deum performed before the king at Fontainebleau on 24 October 1700 was very successful, and was sung again in several Parisian churches in ...

(b 1708; d Angers, Jan 23, 1771). French cellist. He was the founder of the French school of cello playing. Among his pupils were Tillière, Janson, Cupis and the elder Duport. He began by playing the bass viol, studying in Germany with Kozecz, the Bohemian performer on that instrument. After hearing the Italian cellist Francischello he gave up the viol for the cello. In 1739 he played a concerto of his own composition with great success at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. La Borde praised him highly: ‘M. Berteau fut le Professeur qui contribua le plus à la perfection de cet instrument, par la manière dont il en jouait’. Some doubts have been cast upon the authenticity of the few works which survive, largely due to confusion over his date of death, thought by F.-J. Fétis, Eitner and others to be 1756. The later date given above is, however, confirmed by the register of St Pierre d’Angers and in an annotation by Abbé Roze to a manuscript of ‘Sonate del S[i]gnore Berteau ...

(b c1689; d Versailles, Aug 22, 1765). French violinist, musette player, flautist and composer. He may have been related to the three Bessons of 17th-century Marseilles described as ‘lieutenants du roi des violins’, or to a family of musicians of the same name living in Lyons in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1717 he was playing the violin in the king's Musique de la chambre, as a symphoniste, and he was in the orchestra of the royal chapel in 1722. In Paris in 1720 he published his ten Sonates à violon seul et la basse continue. The violin part does not go beyond the 3rd position, but Besson employed the entire technical range of the period, with arpeggios and double stops. In 1723 he acquired the reversion of François Duval's position with the 24 Violons du Roi, and he took up the duties of the post on Duval's death in ...

[Mattia Sigismondo]

(b Leibnitz, nr Graz, c1668; d Salzburg, Aug 27, 1743). Austrian composer and lutenist. He studied at the Jesuit university at Graz from not later than 1684 to 1687, and then moved to the Benedictine university at Salzburg, probably as a result of the election of his father’s former master and patron, Johann Ernst, Count Thun, as Prince Archbishop of Salzburg. In 1688 he entered the court Kapelle, perhaps as a solo singer. He became vice-Kapellmeister in 1703, Kapellmeister in 1706, and also taught the choristers singing for some time. In 1723 he was ennobled by Emperor Charles VI. He was appointed high steward in 1726 by the ruling Archbishop of Salzburg. It is notable that as Kapellmeister, a post he filled until his death, Biechteler was paid less than his predecessor, Heinrich Biber.

Biechteler made an important contribution to the construction of a self-contained repertory for Salzburg Cathedral. His numerous liturgical works observe the distinctions, common in Catholic sacred music, between the ...

(b Rome, c1700; d Mexico, c1763). Composer and violinist of Italian birth active in New Spain. The first Italian named chapelmaster of a cathedral in New Spain (colonial Mexico), Billoni wrote music notable for its virtuosic violin parts and chromaticism.

The continuo part to Billoni’s cantada Obedeciendo a leyes/¿Podrá la influencia?, a contrafactum of his Divina madre/¿Podrás sin ternura?, identifies the composer as Roman, a characterization substantiated by his musical style. Likely related to the Biglioni family of instrument makers in early 18th-century Rome, Billoni seems to have left Europe in the mid-1730s for New Spain. From the record of Billoni’s marriage to María Ramírez de Cartagena conserved at Guadalajara Cathedral, Mexico, it is known that Billoni was the legitimate son of Santiago Billoni, originally of Turin, and Anna Maria Gies of Lucerne. (“Santiago” may be a variant of the Italian “Giacomo” in Spanish language documents.) He served as violinist at Guadalajara Cathedral between ...

(b Alsfeld, Hessen, Feb 19, 1687; d Eisenach, Feb 26, 1733). German violinist and composer. In 1700 his family moved to Kassel where he studied music for five years with the Italian Kapellmeister Ruggiero Fedeli. Impressed by his progress, the Landgrave sent him to Berlin to study with Volumier. After a year in Berlin, Birkenstock spent a year at Bayreuth as the pupil of Fiorelli. He then went to Paris in 1708 to perfect his violin technique under the guidance of François Duval. The following year he became a member of the court orchestra at Kassel, and in 1721 was promoted to the position of first violin. During the year 1722 he undertook a concert tour, spending seven months in Amsterdam where his first violin sonatas were published. While in Holland Birkenstock refused a lucrative appointment at the King of Portugal's establishment. Returning to Kassel, he was subsequently (...

(b nr Tours, 1711; d Paris, 1769). French theorist, composer and cellist. The Marquise de Villeroy was for a time his pupil and patron. He claimed the discovery of a third mode (‘mode mixte’) between major and minor, and his theories provoked controversy and criticism (from Daquin, La Borde and others); after the performance of his symphony in the newly discovered third mode, on 30 May 1751, Rousseau published a sympathetic comment in the Mercure de France (June 1751), and Blainville himself replied (November 1751 and May 1752) to objections such as those of J.A. Serre (January 1752).

In his L'esprit de l'art he discussed aspects of vocal composition and performance: recitative, ariette, the voice, accompaniment and expression. His last theoretical work, the Histoire générale et philologique (dedicated to the Duchesse de Villeroy) has a final section on harmonic theory, in which he tried to demonstrate that the method of ‘counterpoint’ (of Corelli, Lully and Campra) is preferable to that of the ...

(d ?Paris, 1772). French bassoonist and composer. He was probably the son of a bassoonist at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris in the late 17th century, who may have been maître de chapelle at Limoges in 1717. The younger Blaise was a bassoonist at the Comédie-Italienne by 1737, when (according to the Mercure de France) he arranged music for Le petit maistre. In 1743 he was chef de l’orchestre at the Foire St Laurent, and the next year he took the same post at the Foire St Germain (Boismortier, formerly his deputy, assumed the head position at St Laurent). Blaise continued as bassoonist for the Comédie-Italienne, composing and arranging ariettes, divertissements, vaudevilles and dances for 44 parodies, ballet-pantomimes, comic operas and a spectacle à machines presented there between 1737 and 1769 (for detailed lists see Brenner, 1947 and 1961, and Barnes). He was listed in the Almanach des spectacles...

(bap. Besançon, March 13, 1700; d Paris, Oct 28, 1768). French flautist and composer. The son of Jean-Baptiste Blavet, a turner, and Oudette Lyard, he taught himself several instruments, becoming accomplished on the bassoon and flute. He married Anne-Marguerite Ligier in 1718; the couple’s long and happy marriage resulted in two daughters and two sons, both of whom became priests and one of whom, Jean-Louis, was the author of five books and a number of translations.

In 1723 Blavet moved to Paris in the entourage of Duke Charles-Eugène Lévis. Three years later he made his début at the Concert Spirituel, launching a remarkable public career. During the next quarter of a century Blavet appeared at the Concert Spirituel more frequently than any other performer, and throughout the period musicians and writers were unanimous in stating that his singing tone, pure intonation and brilliant technique set the standard in flute playing for all of Europe. On ...

Member of Bononcini family

( b Modena, June 18, 1677; d Modena, July 8, 1726). Composer and cellist , second son of (1) Giovanni Maria Bononcini. He worked alongside his more famous elder brother, (2) Giovanni, until 1713. By 1686 both were students of G.P. Colonna in Bologna. When Cardinal Pamphili was papal legate there during the period 1690–93 both played in his orchestra. Antonio composed a Laudate pueri with a florid obbligato for cello in 1693, and about the same time a set of 12 cello sonatas that employ the same kinds of patterned figuration. Only two cello sonatas preceded them, both by Gabrielli. In 1694 Bononcini was listed first among the cellists active in Rome; by November 1696 he had joined the Congregazione di S Cecilia; and during the years 1694–8 he or his elder brother played for six events sponsored by Cardinal Ottoboni. In 1698 he wrote ...

Member of Bononcini family

( b Modena, July 18, 1670; d Vienna, July 9, 1747). Composer and cellist , son of (1) Giovanni Maria Bononcini (i).

Giovanni Bononcini moved to Bologna when his father's death made him an orphan at the age of eight. There he studied counterpoint with G.P. Colonna at S Petronio; at the age of 15 he published three instrumental collections and was accepted into the Accademia Filarmonica on 30 May 1686. During the next two years he published three more collections, was engaged at S Petronio as a string player and singer, composed two oratorios which were performed in both Bologna and Modena, and succeeded G.F. Tosi as maestro di cappella at S Giovanni in Monte. For this church he wrote the double-choir masses that were printed as his op.7 in 1688. He composed a new oratorio for Modena in 1690, and in 1691 dedicated his op.8, consisting of well-wrought vocal duets, to Emperor Leopold I and played in the orchestra of the papal legate, the Roman Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili....

[Angelo Bononcini]

Member of Bononcini family

( b Modena, Nov 18, 1678; d Rome, Nov 1753). Violinist and composer , son of (1) Giovanni Maria Bononcini (i). He was born one hour after his father’s death and was given the same name. Nothing is known of any association with his elder half-brothers, and the suggestion made by La Via that Ghezzi’s drawing of ‘Bononcino [and] nephew of Bononcino’ might represent (2) Giovanni and Giovanni Maria (ii) seems unlikely, although they both did work at Rome during the period 1714–19. In 1704 Giovanni Maria wrote from Venice to a friend in Modena; his other extant letters (in I-MOe ) were written from Rome to Modena during the period 1707–15. In Rome he was employed as a professional violinist, by Cardinal Pamphili (1707–9), Prince Ruspoli (1707–15), the church of S Carlo ai Catinari (1715–36), Cardinal Ottoboni (1717–37...