Franz (Ignaz) Danzi - Cello Concerto in E-minor

 

 

 Franz (Ignaz) Danzi

 

Franz Ignaz Danzi (15 June 1763 – 13 April 1826) was a German cellist, composer and conductor, the son of the Italian cellist Innocenz Danzi (1730–1798) and brother of the noted singer Franzeska Danzi. Danzi lived at a significant time in the history of European music. His career, spanning the transition from the late Classical to the early Romantic styles, coincided with the origin of much of the music that lives in our concert halls and is familiar to contemporary classical-music audiences. As a young man he knew Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he revered; he was a contemporary of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom he — like many of his generation — had strong but mixed feelings; and he was a mentor for the young Carl Maria von Weber, whose music he respected and promoted.

 

1763. 6. 15 독일 바덴 슈베칭겐~ 1826. 4. 13 카를스루에(63세). 이탈리아계 독일의 음악가.

모차르트보다 7년 늦게, 베토벤보다는 7년 빠르게 태어났다.

오페라·교회음악·가곡·교향곡·협주곡을 많이 작곡했지만 주로 실내악(특히 목관 합주곡)으로 유명하다. 이탈리아 태생인 아버지에게 첼로를 배웠고, 15세 때 유명한 만하임 심포니 오케스트라에서 첼로를 연주했다.

칼 마리아 폰 베버의 절친한 친구이자 후원자로서 베버의 오페라들을 무대에 올리는 데에 기여한 것으로 잘 알려져 있으며, 슈트트가르트 와 만하임의 궁정 음악가로 일했다.

1790년 가수인 마르가레트 마르샹과 결혼한 후 지휘자로서 아내와 함께 순회공연을 하여 성공을 거두었다. 1800년 아내가 죽자 은퇴했지만 1807년에 슈투가르트 심포니 오케스트라의 악장으로 임명되었고, 1812년 카를스루에로 가서 궁정악장으로 일했다.

 

 Cello Concerto in E-minor

Picture: Albert Ludovici - Fantasia in White

 

Mov.I: Allegro 00:00
Mov.II: Larghetto 15:14
Mov.III: Allegretto 20:08

Cellist: Thomas Blees
Orchestra: Berlin Symphony Orchestra

Conductor: Carl-August Bünte

 

Life and career

Born in Schwetzingen and raised in Mannheim, Danzi studied with his father and with Georg Joseph Vogler before he joined the superlative orchestra of the Elector Karl Theodor in 1778 as a teenager. In 1780, the first of his woodwind compositions was published at Mannheim. His father, principal cellist of the orchestra, was praised by Mozart for his playing at the premiere of Idomeneo. Danzi remained behind in a Mannheim that was rendered more provincial when Karl Theodor moved his court to Munich in 1778. After an apprenticeship with the small theatre orchestra left in Mannheim, he rejoined the main court in Munich as principal cellist — taking his father's position — in 1784.

In 1790, he married the singer and composer Maria Margarethe Marchand, with whom he travelled in an opera troupe to Leipzig, Prague, Venice, and Florence.

By 1798, once more in Munich, he rose to the position of assistant Kapellmeister in one of the most important musical centers of Europe, but in 1807, unhappy at the treatment he received at court and despairing of any further advancement, he left Munich to be Kapellmeister in the smaller and less important Stuttgart court of the new king of Württemberg, Frederick I. After five years he moved again to Karlsruhe, where he spent the last years of his life at the Royal Konservatorium struggling to raise the modest courtly musical establishment to respectability.

He died in Karlsruhe.

Contribution

Danzi is known today chiefly for his woodwind quintets, in which he took justifiable pride for the idiomatic treatment of the individual instruments. He composed in most major genres of the time, including opera, church music, orchestral works, and many varieties of chamber music. He was a first-rate cellist as well as a conscientious and — by all reports — effective orchestra leader and conductor.

At Schwetzingen, the city concert hall was renamed in his honour in 2005.