Francesco Maria Veracini
As a composer, according to Manfred Bukofzer, "His individual, if not subjective, style has no precedent in baroque music and clearly heralds the end of the entire era",[1] while Luigi Torchi maintained that "he rescued the imperiled music of the eighteenth century",[2] His contemporary, Charles Burney, held that "he had certainly a great share of whim and caprice, but he built his freaks on a good foundation, being an excellent contrapuntist".
His grandfather, Francesco (di Niccolò) Veracini, had been one of the first violinists of Florence, and ran a music school in the house until ill health forced him to turn the business over to his eldest son, Antonio, in 1708.
The celebration, held in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari included a vocal Te Deum and Mass, as well as motets and concertos performed under the direction of padre Ferdinando Antonio Lazari.
The manuscript scores of all the works performed that day, including Veracini's concerto, were bound together in a handsome presentation volume now found in the National Library of Austria.
[8] According to another opinion, this concerto was Veracini's Violin Concerto in D Major, "a otto strumenti, di Francesco Maria Ueracini Suonato dallo stesso al post comunio", 1711), but was performed in Frankfurt rather than Venice, at Charles VI's coronation on 22 December 1711, just two days before Veracini's appearance as a soloist on Christmas Eve in Venice, some 800 kilometers to the south.
At the court of Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine and Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici he performed his oratorio Mosè al Mar Rosso.
[12] To justify his salary, Veracini had to compose chamber music for the court,[14] transferring him to the official payroll as Kapellmeister in August 1717 and not as a violinist.
Whilst in Venice he secured the services of Margherita Durastanti and Vittoria Tesi and in Bologna added Maria Antonia Laurenti.
The braggart Veracini fell into such a rage over this that he did not come out of his room for several days, and out of shame and despair finally publicly threw himself out of a window onto the street in Dresden.
Charles Jennens liked the opera and ordered a score; Lord Hervey, not known for his musical perception, and Henry Liddell, 1st Baron Ravensworth were bored.
of the Manchester Central Library was developed by German musicologist Holger Schmitt-Hallenberg along with Fabio Biondi, who composed the recitatives that have not been preserved.
Burney, scorned the music of Roselinda as "wild, awkward, and unpleasant; manifestly produced by a man unaccustomed to write for the voice, and one possessed of a capo pazzo", and ridiculed the inclusion of the ballad tune as an attempt "to flatter the English" that failed because "few of the North Britons, or admirers of this national and natural Music, frequent the opera, or mean to give half a guinea to hear a Scots tune, which perhaps their cook-maid Peggy can sing better than any foreigner",[28] but confessed that "This opera, to my great astonishment when I examined the Music, ran twelve nights", whereas L'errore di Salomone was given only twice.
The six Overtures were performed for Prince Friedrich August in Venice in 1716, as part of Veracini's ultimately successful attempt to secure a position at the Dresden court.
Veracini also wrote a "lively, highly original theory treatise",[29] Il trionfo della pratica musicale, and edited other composers' works, adding "improvements" of his own, such as he did in his Dissertazioni with the Opus 5 Violin Sonatas of Arcangelo Corelli.
