Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-1762) - Sonata in G

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Composer: Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-1762)
Work: Sonata in G
Performers: Jοhn Irvіng (harpsichord)

Painting: Luis Eugenio Meléndez (1716-1780) - Bodegón con plato de peras y guindas
Image in high resolution: https://flic.kr/p/2iJafB6

Further info: https://www.amazon.com/Sonatas-Court-Salzburg-John-Irving/dp/B006XFBRTE
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ER5QWgPVIr5BPqyv9791i

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Johann Ernst Eberlin
(Jettingen, bap. 27 March 1702 - Salzburg, 19 June 1762)

German composer and organist. He attended the Gymnasium in Augsburg, but his consuming interest in music kept him from applying himself fully to his studies. His musical education was similar to that of Leopold Mozart. As an 11-year-old boy Eberlin participated in school performances of musical plays; in later years, this kind of dramatic music occupied him frequently as a composer. Eberlin arrived in Salzburg in 1721 and was a student at the Benedictine university until 1723 but did not complete a course of study. He became fourth organist at Salzburg Cathedral in 1726 and by 1749 had risen to the rank of court and cathedral Kapellmeister. Leopold Mozart, in his description of the Salzburg musical establishment (published in F.W. Marpurg’s Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, iii, Berlin, 1757, 185–98), called Eberlin ‘a thorough and accomplished master of the art of composing … He is entirely in command of the notes, and he composes easily and rapidly … One can compare him to the two famous and industrious composers, [Alessandro] Scarlatti and Telemann’. Eberlin was on friendly terms with the Mozart family and with the clergy of St Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg, often composing music for special occasions there. In 1752 Eberlin’s daughter Maria Josefa Katharina married Anton Cajetan Adlgasser, who two years later became cathedral organist. Eberlin received the honorary appointment of Titular-Truchsess, or princely steward, in 1754 and was widely honoured and respected at the time of his death.

Eberlin wrote virtually all kinds of music for which there was official demand in Salzburg. He composed at least 91 dramatic works for the court theatre, the university and the Nonnberg convent. The music is largely in the reigning Italian style, with secco and accompanied recitatives and extended da capo arias. Simple songs in the style of south German folk music also occur. Some oratorio performances were probably staged, with scenery. From 1742 he supplied music for numerous school plays and oratorios performed at the university and at St Peter’s – a local theatrical and musical tradition that disappeared soon after his death. Comic intermezzos are frequent in the school plays, with passages in Salzburg dialect and occasional use of melodrama. Sigismundus Hungariae rex (1753) was performed in 1761 in honour of the archbishop, with 146 participants, among them the five-year-old W.A. Mozart. Eberlin influenced composers of the next generation chiefly through his sacred vocal music. Several contemporary manuscript scores, that were normally made for study purposes, contain works by Eberlin which are mostly in the strict contrapuntal style traditionally used for Advent and Lent. Best known is a manuscript from about 1733 (in GB-Lbl) which contains 19 liturgical works by Eberlin and Michael Haydn, 18 of them in the hand of Leopold Mozart: this manuscript is mentioned repeatedly in the correspondence between Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart (kAnh.109vi/A71–88). They both thought highly of Eberlin’s contrapuntal writing; Leopold, in sending these scores to his son, pointed out that they were still good models when writing for the church. Wolfgang, in later years, continued to admire Eberlin’s vocal writing, though he revised his opinion of his keyboard fugues. These fugues, one of which was ascribed for a long time to J.S. Bach, were the only works by Eberlin to be published during his own lifetime. His treatise Fundamenta partiturae survives in a copy made in 1766 (A-Ssp). #ClassicalMusic