Giovanni Battista Sammartini

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Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700 or 1701 – 1775 in Milan) was an Italian composer, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was himself a prolific composer of 3 operas, over 70 symphonies, concertos and chamber music, which show, the symphonies especially, the beginnings of a change from the brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. His earliest music was for liturgical use.

Sammartini's works are referred to, in publications or recordings, either by the opus number they received in his lifetime, or by the J-C numbers they receive in the Jenkins-Churgin catalog referred to below. Newell Jenkins edited some of Sammartini's works, including a Magnificat, for the first time (he was also an editor of works by Vivaldi, Paisiello and Boccherini, among others).

He is often confused with his brother, Giuseppe (1695 – 1750), a composer with a similarly prolific output (and the same first initial).

[edit] Selected works

• Operas:
  • Memet, a drama in three acts
• Sonatas:
  • For organ
  • For cello
  • For violin
  • For flute
  • Trio sonatas (for flute, violin and continuo, for example)
• Concertos:
  • For cello and piccolo
  • For flute
  • For violin
• Symphonies:
  • 68 or more

[edit] References

Churgin, Bathia and Jenkins, Newell. Thematic Catalog of the Works of Giovanni Sammartini: Orchestral and Vocal Music. Cambridge: published for the American Musicological Society by Harvard University Press, 1976. ISBN 0-674-87735-7.

Cattoretti, Anna, ed., Giovanni Battista Sammartini and his musical environment, Brepols, Turnhout, 2004. ISBN 2-503-51233-X.