| Pietro Raimondi |
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| people from rome city | |
| raimondi, pietro | |
| italian opera composers | |
| italian composers | |
| romantic composers | |
| 1786 births | |
| 1853 deaths | |
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Raimondi was born in Rome , and received his early education in Naples . He spent part of his early career in Genoa , and then in Sicily , where he had operas performed in Catania and Messina ; however he moved back to Naples in 1820 , and began a career as an opera composer there. While he was best known as an opera composer during this time, he was obsessed with counterpoint, and spent his spare time writing Fugue s: fugues for many voices, as well as simultaneous fugues in different keys and modes for multiple groups of different instruments. He considered this work to be experimental, and did not incorporate his experimentation, early in his career, into his operas. Few of Raimondi's operas were successful, and as soon as he realized he was being eclipsed by Rossini , and later by Bellini and Donizetti , he changed his compositional direction from production of operas to sacred music; in that domain he had a better opportunity to indulge his love of counterpoint. He published a counterpount treatise in 1836 , around the same time as the first of his experimental compositions for multiple choruses and orchestras: from this year forward he devoted most of his energies to such creations. However he had not forgotten his previous career as an operatic composer, and made a few last attempts to achieve a success on the operatic stage. One of the most spectacular of his experiments in musical simultaneity was his triple , receiving from him the position of ''maestro di cappella'' at St. Peter's , a level of acknowledgement he had never achieved in the operatic realm. Raimondi followed the triple oratorio with the composition of a double opera, one serious and one tragic, which like the triple oratorio was designed to be performed either consecutively or simultaneously. This work (''Adelasia/I quattro rustici'') was left incomplete at his death in 1856 ; however, much of the orchestration, counterpoint, and many of the scene changes had been worked out. As conceived, each opera would have served as a commentary on the other. This double opera has never been completed or staged, and along with Raimondi's other late music is an example of an experimental trend in the middle 19th Century which was never followed up by anyone else. In his actual musical language, Raimondi was conservative, and his simultaneities work by following traditional rules of counterpoint, as well as by staying in a limited tonal universe. REFERENCES
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