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Gaetano Donizetti

1797 - 1848 Person Name: Donizetti Hymnal Number: 186 Composer of "DANA" in The Gospel Psalmist Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (born 29 November 1797 – died 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. Donizetti came from a non-musical background but, at an early age, he was taken under the wing of composer Simon Mayr who had set up the Lezioni Caritatevoli and had enrolled him by means of a full scholarship. There he received detailed training in the arts of fugue and counterpoint, and it was from there that Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for the young man at the Bologna Academy. In Bologna, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, although it does not appear to have been performed during his lifetime. Through his life, Donizetti wrote about 70 operas, but an offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to that city and the composition of 28 operas which were given their premieres at that house or in one of the city's smaller houses including the Teatro Nuovo or the Teatro del Fondo. This continued until the production of Caterina Cornaro in January 1844. In all, Naples presented 51 of Donizetti's operas. During this period, success came primarily with the comic operas, the serious ones failing to attract significant audiences. However, the situation changed with the appearance in 1830 of the serious opera, Anna Bolena which was the first to make a major impact on the Italian and international opera scene and, at the same time, to shift the balance for the composer away from success with only comedic operas. However, even after 1830, his best-known works did also include comedies such as L'elisir d'amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843). But significant historical dramas did appear and became successful, sometimes outside Naples before reaching that city. Most significantly, they included Lucia di Lammermoor (the first to be written by librettist Salvadore Cammarano) in 1835, as well as "one of [his] most successful Neapolitan operas", Roberto Devereux in Up to that point, all of his operas had been written to Italian librettos. However, moving to Paris in 1838, Donizetti set his operas to French texts; these include La favorite and La fille du régiment and were first performed in that city from 1840 onward. It appears that much of the attraction of moving to Paris was not just for larger fees and prestige, but his chafing against the censorial limitations which existed in Italy, thus giving him a much greater freedom to choose subject matter. By 1845 severe illness caused him to be moved back to Bergamo to die in 1848. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of bel canto opera during the first fifty years of the Nineteenth Century. The youngest of three sons, Donizetti was born in 1797 in Bergamo's Borgo Canale quarter located just outside the city walls. His family was very poor and had no tradition of music, his father Andrea, being the caretaker of the town pawnshop. Simone Mayr, a German composer of internationally successful operas had become maestro di cappella at Bergamo's principal church in 1802 and he then founded the Lezioni Caritatevoli school in Bergamo in 1805 for the purpose of providing musical training, including classes in literature, beyond that which choirboys ordinarily received up until the time that their voices broke. In 1807, Andrea Donizetti attempted to enroll both his sons, but the elder, Giuseppe (then 18), was considered too old. Gaetano (then 9) was accepted. While not especially successful as a choirboy during the first three trial months of 1807, there being some concern about a diffetto di gola (throat defect), in every other regard Mayr was reporting that Gaetano "surpasses all the others in musical progress". Mayr was able to persuade the authorities that the young boy's talents were worthy of keeping him in the school, and he remained there for nine years until 1815. However, as William Ashbrook notes, in 1809 he was threatened with having to leave because his voice was changing. In 1810 he applied for and was accepted by the local art school, the Academia Carrara, but it is unknown whether he attended classes. Then, in 1811, Mayr once again intervened. Having written both libretto and music for a "pasticcio-farsa", Il piccolo compositore di musica, as the final concert of the academic year, he cast five your students amongst them Donizetti, his young pupil, as "the little composer". As Ashbrook notes this "was nothing less than Mayr's argument that Donizetti be allowed to continue his musical studies". In Bologna, he justified the faith which Mayr had placed in him and in 1816 he wrote what Allitt describes as "his initial exercises in operatic style", the opera Il pigmalione, as well as composing portions of Olympiade and L'ira d'Achille in 1817, these two being no more than "suggest[ing] the work of a student". Encouraged by Mayr to return to Bergamo in 1817, he began his "quartet years" as well as composing piano pieces and most likely being part of quartets where he would have played and heard music of other composers. In addition, he began seeking employment. After some minor compositions under the commission of Paolo Zancla, Donizetti wrote his ninth opera, Zoraida di Granata. This work impressed Domenico Barbaia, a prominent theatre manager, and Donizetti was offered a contract to compose in Naples. Writing in Rome and Milan in addition to Naples, Donizetti achieved some popular success in the 1820s (although critics were often unimpressed). It was not until 1830 that he became well known internationally, when his Anna Bolena was premiered in Milan, and this brought him instant fame throughout Europe. L'elisir d'amore, a comedy produced in 1832, came soon after, and is deemed to be one of the masterpieces of 19th-century opera buffa (as is his Don Pasquale, written for Paris in 1843). Shortly after L'elisir d'amore, Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor, based on The Bride of Lammermoor, the novel by Sir Walter Scott. This became his most famous opera, and one of the high points of the bel canto tradition, reaching a stature similar to that of Bellini's Norma. Donizetti's wife, Virginia Vasselli, gave birth to three children, none of whom survived. Within a year of his parents' deaths, on 30 July 1837 his wife died from cholera. By 1843, Donizetti was exhibiting symptoms of syphilis and probable bipolar disorder. After being institutionalized in 1845, he was sent to Paris, where he could be cared for. After visits from friends, including Giuseppe Verdi, Donizetti was taken back to Bergamo, his hometown. After several years in the grip of insanity, he died in 1848 in the house of a noble family, the Scotti. Donizetti was buried in the cemetery of Valtesse but in the late 19th century his body was transferred to Bergamo's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore near the grave of his teacher Simon Mayr. Donizetti, a prolific composer, is best known for his operatic works, but he also wrote music in a number of other forms, including some church music, a number of string quartets, and some orchestral pieces. Altogether, he composed about 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces. --en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (excerpts)

Thomas Ryder

Person Name: T. P. Ryder Hymnal Number: 762 Composer of "BAHNMAIER" in The Gospel Psalmist

Robert Broderip

1758 - 1808 Person Name: R. Broderip Hymnal Number: 112 Composer of "FOUNTAIN" in The Gospel Psalmist

Schutz

Hymnal Number: 717 Author of "Unfailing Goodness" in The Gospel Psalmist

John O. Thomson

1782 - 1818 Person Name: Thomson Hymnal Number: 93 Author of "All-embracing Providence of God" in The Gospel Psalmist Thomson, John, M.D., 1783-1818. A Leeds physician, who contributed to Aspland's Collection, 1310:— 1. To God, the universal King. To the One God. 2. Jehovah, God ! thy gracious power. Omnipresence of God. 3. To thee my heart, eternal King. Praise. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

1710 - 1736 Person Name: Pergolesi Hymnal Number: 951 Composer of "MEDWAY" in The Gospel Psalmist

Andrews Norton

1786 - 1853 Person Name: Norton Hymnal Number: 700 Author of "Trust and Submission" in The Gospel Psalmist Norton, Andrews, D.D., son of Samuel Norton, was born at Higham, Massachusetts, Dec. 31, 1786, and was educated at Higham, and at Harvard College. After being engaged there for a short time as a tutor, he was appointed Librarian, and subsequently Lecturer on Biblical Criticism, as successor to Dr. Channing. When the Theological School was opened in 1819 he became Dexter Professor of Literature. This position he held until 1830. He died at Newport, Rhode Island, Sept. 18, 1853. He was for some time editor of the General Repository and Review, and published several prose works, one of the most extensive being The Genuineness of the Gospels, in 4 volumes. His hymns are few in number, and are mainly meditations in verse. They were contributed to various periodicals, and after his death were collected and published in a small volume. Of these hymns the following are in common use:-- 1. Another year, another year, The unceasing rush, &c. Close of the Year. Appeared in the Christian Examiner in Nov. and Dec. 1827, in 11 stanzas of 4 lines. It is used in an abbreviated form. In the American Boston Unitarian Hymns [&Tune] Book, 1868, it begins with st. vi., "O what concerns it him whose way." 2. Faint not, poor traveller, though thy way. Fortitude. Printed in the Christian Disciple, July and Aug., 1822, in 7 st. of 4 1., and again in the West Boston Collection, 1823. 3. He has gone to his God, he has gone to his home. Burial. Printed in the Christian Examiner, Jan. and Feb., 1824. 4. My God, I thank Thee! may no thought. Trust and Submission. Appeared in the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, Sept., 1809. This is his earliest and best known hymn. 5. 0 stay thy tears:for they are blest. Burial of the Young. Printed in the General Repository and Review, April, 1812, in 5 st. of 4 1. In 1855, st. iii.-v. were given in Beecher's Plymouth Collection, No. 1094, as "How blest are they whose transient years." 6. Where ancient forests round us spread. Dedication of a Church. This "Hymn for the Dedication of a Church," is dated 1833. These hymns are in some of the American hymnals. Nos. 1, 4, 5 are in Martineau's Hymns, 1873, and the full texts of all are in Putnam's Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, Boston, U.S.A., 1875. [Rev. F. M. Bird, M.A.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Mrs. Nichols

Hymnal Number: 791 Author of "Anniversary of an Orphan Asylum" in The Gospel Psalmist

William Roscoe

1753 - 1831 Person Name: Roscoe Hymnal Number: 87 Author of "Praise and Obedience" in The Gospel Psalmist Roscoe, William, the father, was born March 8, 1753, in Liverpool, of humble origin. After very meagre schooling, and three years of work in his father's market garden, he was articled to an attorney, and subsequently practised in Liverpool till 1796, when he withdrew from the profession. From the first literature was his chief delight, and throughout a long career of public usefulness he united its pursuit with the efforts of enlightened patriotism and the advocacy of higher education and reform. Liverpool was a centre of the old slave-trade, and Roscoe was one of the first to raise his voice against the iniquity. At the age of 20 he had already uttered a protest in his descriptive poem Mount Pleasant, and in 1787 he published a longer poem, The Wrongs of Africa (Pt. ii. 1788), devoted to the subject. During his brief parliamentary experience as member for Liverpool, in 1807, he had further opportunity of advocating the cause of liberty and humanity. His first great historical work, the Life of Lorenzo dé Medici, was published in 1796, and the Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth, in 1805. After withdrawing from his legal practice, Roscoe had hoped to be able to devote himself entirely to letters, but the claims of friendship induced him in 1800 to enter into a banking business, which involved him in commercial troubles, ending in 1820 in his bankruptcy. His library had to be sold, but part of it was bought by friends, and presented to the Liverpool Athenæum, which in 1789 Roscoe had been instrumental in founding. In 1822 he published Illustrations of the Life of Lorenzo dé Medici, defending the views adopted in his former history, and two years later edited a new edition of Pope's works, with a life of the poet. He died June 30, 1831. (Cf. The Life of William Roscoe, by his son, Henry Roscoe, in 2 vols., London, T. Cadell, 1833.) As a member of the congregation of Unitarians meeting in Renshaw Street Chapel, Liverpool, Roscoe took part in preparing A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Worship, printed for their use in 1818. He contributed eight hymns and the concluding anthem. Of these hymns the following are in common use at the present time:— 1. Let our loud song of praise arise. Praise. 2. Go, suffering habitant of earth. Life, a Warfare. 3. Great God, beneath Whose piercing eye. Divine Providence. 4. Thus said Jesus, Go and do. Love to our Neighbour. 5. What is the first and great command ? The Commandments. These hymns are in several Unitarian collections, including Martineau's Hymns, 1840. No. 3 was written in 1788, as a "secular hymn" of ten stanzas, to be sung at the Benn's Garden Chapel on the Centenary of the Revolution. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Caroline A. B. Southey

1786 - 1854 Person Name: Mrs. Southey Hymnal Number: 928 Author of "The Mariner's Hymn" in The Gospel Psalmist Southey, Caroline Ann, née Bowles, daughter of Charles Bowles, of Buckland, near Lymington, was born in 1786; married, in 1839, to Robert Southey, the poet; and died in 1854. Her publications include Solitary Hours, 1826; The Birthday, a Poem, 1836; and some prose works. Her Poetical Works were published in 1867; and her correspondence with Southey in 1882. A few pieces from her works are in common use as hymns:— 1. I weep, but not rebellious tears. For the Aged. Published in her Solitary Hours, 1826; and, again, in her Poetical Works, 1867, p. 285, in 5 stanzas of 6 lines. It is given, in full, in the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858. To the line, "The faithful few made perfect there " (st. v., 1. 5), the fol¬lowing note is appended in the Poetical Works:-—"The word ‘few' is used here in no presumptuously exclusive sense of the Author's, but simply as being the scrip¬tural phrase, 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' The word having been altered, lately, in two religious publications, where the poem was inserted unknown to the Author, it is thought proper to annex this note." 2. Launch thy bark, mariner. For Sailors. Given in her Solitary Hours, 1826, p. 22, in 5 stanzas of 8 lines, and entitled, "The Mariner's Hymn;" also in her Poetical Works, 1867. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)