Giovanni Battista Sammartini (ca. 1698 – 1775 in Milan) was an Italian composer, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was himself a prolific composer of operas, symphonies (over seventy), concertos and chamber music, which show, the symphonies especially, the beginnings of a change from the brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. His earliest music was for liturgical use. Events January 4 - Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire. ... 1775 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese dialect: Milán) is the main city in northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed region in Italy. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... The Casavant pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Montreal The organ is one of the oldest musical instruments in the western musical tradition, with a rich history connected with the Christian religion and civic ceremony. ... Gluck, detail of a portrait by Joseph Duplessis, dated 1775 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) Christoph Willibald (von) Gluck (July 2, 1714 – November 15, 1787) was a German composer. ... A symphony is an extended piece of music usually for orchestra and comprising several movements. ... In classical music, the word concerto (pl. ... Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. ... (Franz) Joseph Haydn, (March 31 or April 1, 1732 – May 31, 1809) was a leading austrian composer of the Classical period, called the Father of the Symphony and Father of the String Quartet. Although he is still often called Franz Joseph Haydn, the name Franz was not used in the... Mozart drawing by Doris Stock 1789 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) is among the most significant and enduringly popular composers of European classical music. ... From the Greek word λειτουργια, which can be transliterated as leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, a liturgy comprises a prescribed religious ceremony, according to the traditions of a particular religion; it may refer to, or include, an elaborate formal ritual (such as the Catholic Mass), a daily activity such...

Sammartini's works are referred to, in publications or recordings, either by the opus number they received in his lifetime, or by the J-C numbers they receive in the Jenkins-Churgin catalog referred to below. Newell Jenkins edited some of Sammartini's works, including a Magnificat, for the first time (he was also an editor of works by Vivaldi, Paisiello and Boccherini among others). Opus is a Latin word which means work (in the sense of a work of art). Some composers musical pieces are identified by opus numbers which generally run either in order of composition or in order of publication. ...

He is often confused with his brother, Giuseppe (1695 – 1750), a composer with a similarly prolific output (and the same first initial). Giuseppe Sammartini (1693/95?, Milan - abt. ...

Selected works

• Operas
  • Memet, a drama in three acts
• Sonatas
  • For organ
  • For cello
  • For violin
  • For flute
  • Trio sonatas (for flute, violin and continuo, for example)
• Concertos
  • For cello and piccolo
  • For flute
  • For violin
• Symphonies
  • Some seventy

Book

Churgin, Bathia and Jenkins, Newell. Thematic Catalog of the Works of Giovanni Sammartini: Orchestral and Vocal Music. Cambridge: published for the American Musicological Society by Harvard University Press, 1976. Not presently available. ISBN 0674877357.

Cattoretti, Anna, ed., Giovanni Battista Sammartini and his musical environment, Brepols, Turnhout, 2004. ISBN 2-503-51233-x.