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The other Sammartini
Stefano Bagliano
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Giuseppe Sammartini (b. Milan, 6 Jan 1695; d. London, ?17–23 Nov 1750) was an Italian oboist and composer. He was the son of a French oboist, Alexis Saint-Martin, and the elder brother of the composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. The report of his death appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post of Saturday, 24 November 1750: ‘Last week died at his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, Signior S. Martini, Musick Master to her Royal Highness and thought to be the finest performer on the hautboy in Europe’. Sammartini probably studied the oboe with his father, with whom he performed in an orchestra at Novara for a religious ceremony in 1711. In 1717 he and G.B. Sammartini were listed as oboists at S Celso, Milan, and in 1720 the ‘Sammartini brothers’ were oboists in the orchestra of the Regio Ducal Teatro there. An oboe concerto by Giuseppe was published in Amsterdam as early as about 1717, and in 1724 he contributed an aria and sinfonia for the second part of a Milanese oratorio, ‘La calunnia delusa’. J.J. Quantz, who visited Milan in 1726, regarded Sammartini as the only good wind player in the opera orchestra; when he went to Venice he ranked him with the violinists Vivaldi and Madonis as the outstanding players he had heard. Sammartini departed Italy for Brussels, where he remained briefly before traveling to London, the city he would settle in for the remainder of his career. When he arrived in London from Milan (probably in 1728), he was one of many Italian musicians who saw their future in Anglo-Saxon terrain. Geminiani, Barsanti and Bononcini were among the composers who made their home on the isle. This trend for emigration out of Italy was quite strong, for two different reasons. In the seventeenth century, Italian musicians were in demand abroad as stars of their trade. The sunshine of Italian art that seduced so many central European artists to Rome, Florence, and Venice could be brought, in the form of Italian musicians, right to the front door. The numerous appointments of Italian maestros to highly endowed positions above all at the courts of Austrian and German nobles says much in this regard. Second, particularly in England, in the early eighteenth century the work conditions for musicians were favorable. The middle classes had emancipated themselves from the nobility, so that culture, now largely financially independent of the nobility, could blossom. Public concerts and opera undertakings multiplied musicians’ opportunities, making possible the importation of stellar virtuosi.
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The notice of Sammartini’s death in a London newspaper said he was ‘thought to be the finest performer on the hautboy in Europe’. The historian Hawkins, who was young enough to have heard Sammartini play, wrote that ‘as a performer of the hautboy, Martini was undoubtedly the greatest that the world had ever known….’ His considerable ability guaranteed Sammartini’s rise to the top of his field. In the opera orchestra under Handel’s direction he played only the important solos, while orchestral duties were delegated to one of his less privileged colleagues. As an oboist in the opera orchestras, both of Milan and both of London, Sammartini would have had to double on the recorder and flute for special arias with obbligato parts for those instruments. Sammartini was also esteemed as a composer of instrumental music. While Sammartini’s chamber music was extremely popular and often reprinted, his orchestral music apparently became well known only after his death. Most of the concertos and overtures were published posthumously, becoming so popular that they regularly appeared on the programmes of the ‘Concert of Ancient Music’ well into the 19th century. Between 1776 and 1790 his concertos and overtures were performed there more frequently that works by any other Italian composer, including Corelli. Some of Sammartini’s Marches and Minuets were performed for the King’s birthday as late as 1770–75. Sammartini was one of the leading writers of Concertos and Sonatas in England between 1730 and 1750. No fewer than 29 recorder sonatas by Sammartini – as well as some sonatas for the flute, oboe, and violin – have survived in two manuscript collections, today housed in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma and in the Sibley Music Library in Rochester, New York. Sammartini’s works for recorder and transverse flute reveal particular stylistic flexibility, since both instruments were fashionable at the time and were therefore immediately pressed into the service of whatever happened to be the latest vogue. The Concerto in F major for soprano recorder and strings is probably the best-known work today by Giuseppe Sammartini. A real masterpiece, it is without any doubts one of the best solistic concertos of the whole Barock era. The tutti sections of the two fast movements are full of inventiveness and written in an almost ‘concertante’ manner, although with more solemnity in the first movement and more brilliance in the third. The wonderful Siciliano is a fluid and extremely expressive movement. The finale requires deft technique from the soloist, particularly in the fast passages with mixed trills and wide-ranging arpeggiated sequences.
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The recorder sonatas featured here are a good representation of Sammartini’s style, since he rapidly progressed from late-Barock to galant (pre-Classical) methods of composing. Two sonatas have the more old-fashioned four-movement sequence (the two in F major), whereas the Sonata in B flat and the Trio Sonata in G major Op.1 No.4 have the more up-to-date three-movement sequence. In common to all these works is their unpredictability: Sammartini keeps us guessing, melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically from one moment to the next, especially in his slow movements. Beyond that, his bass lines are generally much simpler than his solo parts, and sometimes quite fragmented. The Sonata for cello and basso continuo is taken from a collection entitled Six Solos for Two Violoncellos Compos’d by Sigr. Bononcini and Other Eminent Authors, published in London in 1748. The third sonata in this collection is attribuited to ‘St. Martini’. David Lasocki believes that ‘because Giuseppe was living in London at the time, because two of the other composers represented in the collection (Giovanni Bononcini and Andrea Caporale) are associates with London, and because of the compositional style, we can safely assume that Giuseppe rather than his brother was the composer.’ The Sonata for solo harpsichord ‘Del Signor San Martino’ has been taken from a manuscript of the Biblioteca del Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale di Bologna and attributed to Giovanni Battista Sammartini, the better-known brother of Giuseppe, also a composer and an oboist. This Sonata consists of a single movement, a typical Andantino in galant style, rich in trills and ornamentation, which calls to mind similar compositions of the Neapolitan school of that time. C Stefano Bagliano, 2011 Stefano Bagliano is one of the flautists (recorder/flauto dolce) who are today achieving a growing appreciation at an international level. Got the diploma at the Conservatory Pollini of Padua and specialized with Frans Bruggen, Kees Boeke, Walter Van Hauwe and Pedro Memelsdorf in recorder and ancient music and with Fabrizio Dorsi in orchestral conducting, he won the first prize in several national contests. He started an intense concert activity, with the admiration of the famous international flutists Frans Bruggen and Walter Van Hauwe: he has performed as a soloist more than 600 concerts in prestigious festivals and venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Moscow Conservatoire, the Munich Gasteig, Ljubljana International Festival, the concerts of Palazzo Venezia
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in Rome broadcasted by RAI 3, the Italian Cultural Institutes of Los Angeles and of New York, the Sounding Jerusalem Festival, Boston Recorder Society and many others. Bagliano is the founder and the director of the ensemble Collegium Pro Musica, which specializes in 17th- and 18th-century repertoire, performed in accordance with the style of that age and using true copies of original instruments. The Collegium comprises many of the best Italian performers, all carrying out an intense concert activity as soloists with major European concert institutions, and working with other noted Baroque groups and conductors. Together Bagliano and the Collegium have made recordings of Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach, Marcello, Barbella, Merula, Stradella, Graupner and Fasch for several labels, earning warm appreciations from European and American critics in journals such as Early Music, Fanfare, Diapason, Amadeus, and Fono Forum. As a conductor of Collegium Pro Musica Bagliano has performed with singers including Emma Kirkby, Roberta Invernizzi and Catherine King, and conductors such as Rudolf Barshai and Alan Curtis; and with Monica Huggett, Bob van Asperen, Ottavio Dantone, Andrea Coen, Sonatori della Gioiosa Marca and L’Astrèe. Several of these recordings were issued as a sampler to Italian musical magazines such as CD Classics, Orfeo and Amadeus. He is the artistic director of the International Festival of Chamber Music ‘Le Vie del Barocco’ of Genoa, Turin and Savona and consultant member of ‘Musica di Corte’ of Campobasso. He was a member of the jury at the 2006 Zinetti Chamber Music International Competition of Verona and at the 2009 ERTA Italian Recorder Competition of Padova. He is the art director of the Musical Courses and of the International Recorder Week of Genoa. Bagliano has taught in several musical courses and masterclasses for various institutions: the Gnessin Institute of Moscow, BRS Boston Recorder Society, Conservatory of Oporto (Portugal), Société Valaisanne de la Flute Sion (Switzerland), Accademia Europea di Musica Antica of Bolzano, and the conservatories of Turin, Campobasso and Cosenza. He is currently a professor of recorder at the Piccinni Conservatory of Bari. He also graduated in Law. www.collegiumpromusica.com
Collegium Pro Musica Recording: 28–30 September 2008, Church of Santa Maria del Prato, Genoa Producer, recording engineer & editing: Fabio Framba Special thanks to Suor Rosangela, Suor Immacolata and the Istituto Suore Immacolatine of Genova Cover image – Robert Tournières: La Barre and other musicians · Photo: National Gallery, London/The Bridgeman Art Library P & C 2011 Brilliant Classics
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