Everything about Johann Adolf Hasse totally explained
Johann Adolph Hasse (baptised
March 25,
1699 – died
December 16,
1783) was an 18th-century
German composer,
singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific
operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to
soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of
librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of
opera seria and 18th-century music.
Early career
Hasse's career began in singing, when he joined the
Hamburg Opera (his family, who were traditionally church musicians, came from near Hamburg) in 1718 as a tenor. In 1719 he obtained a singing post at the court of
Brunswick, where in 1721 his first opera,
Antioco, was performed; Hasse himself sang in the production.
He is thought to have left Germany during 1722. During the 1720s he lived mostly in
Naples, dwelling there for six or seven years. In 1725 his
serenata Antonio e Cleopatra, was performed at Naples; the principal roles were sung by Carlo Broschi, better known as
Farinelli, and
Vittoria Tesi. The success of this work not only earned Hasse many commissions from Naples's opera houses, but also, according to Quantz, brought him into contact with
Alessandro Scarlatti, who became his teacher and friend; Hasse also altered his style in several respects to reflect that of Scarlatti.
Hasse's popularity in Naples increased dramatically and for several years his workload kept him extremely busy. In this period he composed his only full
opera buffa,
La sorella amante, in addition to several
intermezzi and serenatas. He visited the
Venetian Carnival of 1730, where his opera
Artaserse was performed at the
S Giovanni Grisostomo. Metastasio's libretto was heavily reworked for the occasion, and Farinelli took a leading role. Two of his arias from this opera he later performed every night for a decade for
Philip V of Spain.
Dresden and Venice
In 1730 Hasse married Faustina Bordoni, and was also appointed Kapellmeister at the
Dresden court, though he didn't arrive at Dresden until July 1731; earlier in the year he'd been active at
Vienna, supervising a performance of his
oratorio Daniello at the court of the
Habsburgs. Soon after the couple's arrival in Dresden Faustina performed before the court. In September Hasse's
Cleofide (set to a highly adapted Metastasio text) was given its premiere; it seems possible that
J. S. Bach attended the performance; certainly
C. P. E. Bach claimed that Hasse and his father had become good friends around this time.
In October Hasse left Dresden to direct premieres of his next operas at
Turin and
Rome, and he also wrote music for the Venetian theatres at this time. Come the autumn of 1732 and Hasse was at Naples again, though he spent the winter at Venice where his
Siroe was first performed in particularly lavish style. In February 1733 Friedrich August I, Hasse's patron at Dresden, died. As the court went into a year of mourning Hasse was permitted to remain abroad. Many of his sacred works, composed for Venice's churches, date to this time.
For much of 1734 Hasse was at Dresden, but from 1735 until 1737 he was in Italy, largely at Venice. Faustina performed in the September 1735 premiere of
Tito Vespasiano (another adapted Metastsio libretto) at
Pesaro. Returning to Dresden during 1737 Hasse composed 5 new operas, but when the court moved to Poland in the autumn of 1738 he and Faustina came back to Venice, where both of them where extremely popular. His next stay in Dresden was also his longest, between the first months of 1740 and January 1744. In this time he revised
Artaserse, composing new arias for Faustina, and also wrote a couple original
intermezzi. His general avoidance of comic opera seems to have been due to Faustina, who feared that the style of singing demanded by
opera buffa would damage her voice.
Dresden: 1744-63
Between the winter of 1744 and late summer 1745, Hasse was in Italy, but then returned to Dresden for a year.
Frederick the Great, a keen flute player visited the court in December 1745, and it's likely that many of Hasse's flute sonatas and concertos that date to this time were written for Frederick. The King of Prussia was also present at a performance of one of Hasse's
Te Deums, and himself ordered a performance of the composer's opera
Arminio. Soon after Hasse visited Venice and Munich, returning to Dresden in June 1747 to stage his opera
La spartana generosa, performed to celebrate multiple royal weddings at this time. Also at this time the hierarchy at Dresden was restructured;
Nicola Porpora was named Kapellmeister, while Hasse himself was promoted to Oberkapellmeister. The marriage of princess Maria Josepha of Saxony to the French Dauphin gave Hasse the opportunity to journey to Paris in the summer of 1750, where his
Didone abbandonata was performed.
The 1751 Carnival in Dresden saw the retirement of Faustina from operatic performance. He continued to produce new operas throughout the decade, including a setting of Metastasio's
Il re pastore, a text later used by Mozart. In 1756 the Seven Years War compelled the court at Dresden to move to
Warsaw, though Hasse himself lived mostly in Italy, travelling to Poland solely to supervise productions of his operas, if at all. In the autumn of 1760 he moved to Vienna, where he stayed for the next two years, returning to Dresden in 1763 to find much his home destroyed and the musical apparatus of the court opera wrecked. Friedrich August II died soon after and his successor, who also died quickly, deemed elaborate musical events at the court superfluous. Hasse and Faustina were paid two years's salary but given no pension.
Vienna and Venice: last years
In 1764 Hasse travelled to Vienna, where the coronation of
Joseph II was marked by a performance of his
festa teatrale Egeria, again set to a libretto by Metastasio. For the most part, he remained at Vienna until 1773.
Mozart was present at a performance of his
Partenope in September 1767. Most of his operas composed during this period were also successfully produced at Naples. He was the favourite of
Maria Theresa, and it can be argued that he took up the job of
de facto court Kapellmeister. With the premiere of
Piramo e Tisbe (September 1768) Hasse had intended to retire from opera but was compelled by Maria Theresa to compose a further work,
Ruggerio (1771), again set to a Metastasian libretto.
At this time operatic style was undergoing significant change, and the model of
opera seria that Hasse and Metastasio had settled found itself assailed by the threat of the reforms of
Christoph Willibald Gluck and
Ranieri de' Calzabigi, as laid down in the music and libretto for Gluck's opera
Orfeo ed Euridice.
Charles Burney, visiting Vienna in 1773, reported on the debate.
Finding his music under siege from an
avant-garde surge in a new direction, Hasse left Vienna in 1773 and spent the final ten years of his life in Venice, teaching and composing sacred works. Faustina died in November 1781, and Hasse himself, after a long period of suffering from arthritis, just over 2 years later. He was almost completely ignored after his death, until F. S. Kandler paid for his gravestone in Venice, where he's buried, and authored a biography of Hasse in 1820.
Relationship with Metastasio
Hasse's friendship with Metastasio, and his appreciation of the art form the librettist had created, increased over the years. The early Metastasio texts he set were all greatly altered for the purpose, but
Frederick the Great and
Francesco Algarotti both exerted influence in order to make Hasse pay greater respect to Metastasio's works. In the early 1740s he began setting new Metastasian libretti unadapted, and his personal relations with the librettist also improved significantly at around this time. In one his letters, dated to March 1744, Metastasio made the following comments:
In the following years Hasse reset his earlier works based on Metastasio's texts, this time paying great attention to the poet's original intention, and during the 1760s, as Metastasio wrote new texts, Hasse was, as a general rules, the first composer to set them. Burney left the following note:
Style and reputation
Despite G. B. Mancini claiming that Hasse was the
padre della musica, and despite the composer's massive popularity as a figure at the very forefront of 18th-century serious Italian opera, after his death Hasse's reputation vastly declined and his music lay mostly unperformed (with the exception of some of his sacred works, which were revived now and again in Germany). In particular, his operas sank without trace and revival only begun as the 20th century approached its end: Gluck's reforms took opera away from Hasse's style and Metastasio's Arcadian ideals to a new direction from which it wouldn't return.
In his day, Hasse's style was noted primarily for his lyricism and sense of melody. Burney put it this way:
Careful choice of key was also a crucial factor in Hasse's style, with certain emotions usually marked out by certain key choices. Amorous feelings were expressed by A, for instance, while for expressions of aristocratic nobility Hasse used C and B flat; on the other hand, his supernatural and fear-inducing music usually went into the keys of C and F minor. Most of his arias begin in the major, switching only to minor for the B section before returning to major for the
da capo. As his career developed his arias grew much longer but a lyrical sense was still his overriding target.
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