 | Arriaga, Juan Crisostomo - Overture from "Los Esclavos Felices" for Small Orchestra Winds & String Orchestra |
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| Composer : | Arriaga, Juan Crisostomo (1806 - 1826) | ||
| Instrumentation : | Winds & String Orchestra | ||
| Style : | Classical | ||
| Arranger : Publisher : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||
| Copyright : | Public Domain | ||
| Added by magataganm, 07 Oct 2021 Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (1806 – 1826) was a Spanish Basque composer. He was nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young. They also shared the same first and second baptismal names; and they shared the same birthday, 27 January (fifty years apart). He was born in Bilbao, Biscay, on what would have been Mozart's fiftieth birthday. His father (Juan Simón de Arriaga) and the boy's older brother first taught him music. Juan Simón had some musical talent and at age seventeen Juan Crisóstomo was an organist at a church in Berriatúa. Juan Simón worked in Guernica and in 1804 moved to Bilbao and became a merchant in wool, rice, wax, coffee and other commodities. The income generated in this way allowed Juan Simón to think about providing his son, who had shown prodigious musical talent, a way of developing those gifts. In September 1821, Arriaga's father, with the encouragement of composer José Sobejano y Ayala (1791–1857), sent Juan Crisóstomo to Paris, where in November of that year Arriaga began his studies. These included violin under Pierre Baillot, counterpoint with Luigi Cherubini and harmony under François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatoire. From all evidence, Arriaga made quite an impression on his teachers. In 1823, Cherubini, who had become director at the Conservatoire the previous year, famously asked on hearing the young composer's Stabat Mater, "Who wrote this?" and learning it was Arriaga, said to him, "Amazing – you are music itself." Arriaga soon became a teaching assistant in Fétis's class, noted and highly praised both by fellow students and other faculty at the Conservatoire for his talent. Cherubini referred to Arriaga's fugue for eight voices (lost) based on the Credo ... et vitam venturi simply as "a masterpiece", and Fétis was no less effusive — apparently, what impressed all his mentors was his use of sophisticated harmonies, counterpoint and fugue with minimal or no formal instruction. Fétis was already familiar with Arriaga's now-lost opera Los Esclavos Felices ("The Happy Slaves"), stating that "without any knowledge whatsoever of harmony, Juan Crisóstomo wrote a Spanish opera containing wonderful and completely original ideas." Arriaga was well supported during his four years in Paris by his father, but the intensity of his commitment to his studies at the Conservatoire and his meteoric rise, based on his teachers' compliments and assessments of his promise, may have taken a toll on his health: he died in Paris ten days before his twentieth birthday, of a lung ailment (possibly tuberculosis), or exhaustion, perhaps both. He was buried in an unmarked grave at the Cimetière du Nord in Montmartre. Thanks to the Spanish Embassy, since 1977 there has been a plaque marking the house at 314 rue Saint-Honoré in memory of the composer. Arriaga's music was used to create an opera pasticcio, Die arabische Prinzessin. The work was commissioned by the Barenboim-Said Foundation from the composer Anna-Sophie Brüning and the author Paula Fünfeck, and is based on a traditional Arabic tale. The piece was premiered under the title Die Sultana von Cadiz by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and local children's choirs at the Cultural Palace, Ramallah on 14 July 2009. The music publisher Boosey & Hawkes lists further performance runs in Leipzig (in 2011); in Bonn, Bilbao, and Barañáin (in 2013); and in Madrid, Coburg, and Linz (in 2014). Arriaga wrote the opera "Los esclavos felices" in 1820 when he was 14. It was produced in Bilbao however, only the overture and some fragments have survived. Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Cris%C3%B3stomo_Arr iaga). Although originally written for Full Orchestra, I created this Interpretation of the Los esclavos felices ("The Happy Slaves") for Small Orchestra (Flutes, Oboes, Bb Clarinets, French Horns, Bassoons, Timpani, Violins, Violas, Cellos & Basses). | |||
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