11 November 2018

Andrea Zani – violinist and composer

Musician who ushered in the new classical era


Much of Andrea Zani's music has survived and there are many recordings available
Much of Andrea Zani's music has survived and there
are many recordings available
Andrea Teodora Zani, one of the earliest Italian composers to move away from the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1696 in Casalmaggiore in the province of Cremona in Lombardy.

Casalmaggiore, nicknamed ‘the little Venice on the Po’, was a breeding ground for musical talent at this time and Zani was an exact contemporary of Giuseppe Guarneri, the most famous member of the Guarneri family of violin makers in Cremona. He was just a bit younger than the violinist composers, Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini and Pietro Locatelli.

Zani’s father, an amateur violinist, gave him his first violin lessons and he later received instruction from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and Carlo Ricci, who was at the time court musician to the Gonzaga family at their palace in Guastalla.

After Zani played in front of Antonio Caldara, who was Capellmeister for the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in nearby Mantua, he was invited to go to Vienna to be a violinist in the service of the Habsburgs.

Antonio Caldara sponsored Zani's work for many years
Antonio Caldara sponsored
Zani's work for many years
A lot of Zani’s work has survived in both published and manuscript form, some of it having been recovered from European libraries. His early works show the influence of Antonio Vivaldi, but his Opus 2, published in 1729, is considered of historical importance because it shows no ambiguity of genre and has cast off Baroque elements in favour of a more classical style.

After his sponsor, Caldara, died in 1736, Zani returned to Casalmaggiore, where he remained for the rest of his life, leaving the town occasionally to make concert appearances.

Zani died at the age of 60 in 1757 after being injured when the carriage in which he was travelling to Mantua accidentally overturned.


The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Castelmaggiore, near Bologna
The church of Santa Maria
Assunta in Castelmaggiore 
Travel tip:

Casalmaggiore, where Andrea Zani was born, is a town in the province of Cremona in Lombardy. It is believed the town was founded by the Romans as a military camp. Around the year 1000 the town had a fortified castle owned by the Este family. Casalmaggiore was also the birthplace of the composer, Ignazio Donati.

Exhibits at Cremona's Museo del Violino
Exhibits at Cremona's Museo del Violino
Travel tip:

Cremona, the nearest city to Andrea Zani’s home town, is well known as a centre of violin production. The Museo Stradivariano in Via Ugolani Dati in Cremona has a collection of musical items housed in the elegant rooms of a former palace. Visitors can see how the contralto viola was constructed in accordance with the classical traditions of Cremona, view instruments commemorating Italian violin makers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and look at more than 700 relics from the workshop of Antonio Stradivari, who produced violins that are nowadays worth millions. Another museum dedicated to the city's luthiers is the Museo del Violino in Piazza Marconi.

More reading:

Why Antonio Stradivari is considered history's finest violin-maker

Nicolò Amati, the greatest of a dynasty of Cremona luthiers

Success and sadness in the life of Antonio Vivaldi

Also on this day:

1869: The birth of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy's wartime monarch

1932: The birth of controversial broadcaster Germano Mosconi

1961: The birth of Montalbano actor Luca Zigaretti


Home

No comments:

Post a Comment