Antonio Caldara, born at Venice about the year 1680, was vice-master of the Imperial Chapel at Vienna from 1714 to 1763. He was one of the most distinguished composers of his age, both for sacred and dramatic music; but his fame now rests on the former. As to his operas, Metastasio, an excellent judge of the matter, did not think highly of them, notwithstanding their reputation at the time, for, in a letter to Eximeno, he mentions the composer as ‘an eminent contrapuntist, but extremely deficient in expression and pleasing melody.’
SEPTEMBER, 1833.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF S. WEBBE, J. S. SMITH, S. PAXTON, J. DANBY,R. J. S. STEVENS, AND R. SPOFFORTH.
COUNTERPOINT is said, by Johannes Nucius[82], to have originated in this country, an assertion which, well or ill founded, proves how very soon the art was practised in England after being first discovered and reduced to rule. Indeed our early ecclesiastical composers, as well as madrigalists, who suffer nothing by comparison with their contemporaries, the Flemings and Italians, shew the high degree of perfection which music in parts speedily attained in this island; and it may be consoling to our national pride—if as a nation we have any musical pride at all—to reflect, that our composers lost no ground till the encouragement bestowed by the court, and, consequently, by the great generally, on foreigners, tended much to check and depress British genius, by depriving it of that motive for exertion, without which the imagination grows cold, and industry is unavailing.
Nevertheless, the appointments in our choirs, poorly as they now reward talent, formerly kept the art of church composition from sinking, and madrigals never entirely fell into neglect; the study of counterpoint, therefore, was still pursued by a few, and led to the birth of the glee, which is the lovely offspring of the madrigal, the not very distant relation of our church music, and, undeniably, indebted to England for its creation.
It is for the latter reason that we conclude our biographical notices with some account of the most eminent of those glee-composers who have not yet been included in this department of our work[83]; but we feel it necessary to confine ourselves to such as ‘their worldly tasks have done,’ or have long retired from active professional life. Though we lament that, notwithstanding very diligent inquiries, our materials are, except in one or two instances, extremely scanty, furnishing little more than dates, and not always supplying even these. Our musical biography, however, would have been incomplete in the opinion of English readers, without names so well known as those now introduced, and in communicating all that we have been able to learn, we discharge a duty that we should with regret have left unfulfilled.
SAMUEL WEBBE was born in the year 1740. His father, a highly respectable gentleman, died suddenly at Minorca, where he held an office under the British Government, leaving the subject of this sketch an infant,—his property in such a state that his family never benefited by it, and his widow in circumstances which deprived her of the means of bestowing a proper education on her son, who was, at the early age of eleven, apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. When his term was completed, he immediately quitted an employment so far beneath his powers of mind, and commenced the study of the Latin language. But his mother dying a year after he had abandoned his mechanical pursuits, he was reduced to the necessity of copying music as a means of subsistence, being then nearly ignorant of the art, though a great admirer of it. This occupation led to an acquaintance with a German named Barbandt, organist of the Bavarian chapel, who initiated him in the rudiments of music. His almost unparalleled industry enabled him not only to support himself by copying, but to acquire, in addition to the Latin, a knowledge of French. At the age of twenty-three he married, and the birth of a child, while it did not lessen his difficulties, occasioned no interruption in his studies, for he now engaged an Italian master. He must by this time have obtained a considerable knowledge of music, for shortly after becoming a father, he began to give lessons, as well as to compose, and such was his progress, that at the age of twenty-six he gained a prize-medal from the Catch-club for the best canon. In 1768, only two years after, he received the medal for his glee, ‘A gen’rous friendship,’ which immediately established his reputation, and has ever since been admired as one of the most beautiful specimens of simple vocal harmony that the art has to boast.