Giovanni Felice Sances

Giovanni Felice Sances [Sancies, Sanci, Sanes, Sanchez]
(b Rome, c1600; d Vienna, bur. 12 Nov 1679).

Italian composer and singer. The brother of Lorenzo Sances, a singer, he was a boy soprano at the Collegio Germanico in Rome (under Ottavio Catalani and Orgas) from 16 November 1609 to at least 1 April 1614, when his father Orazio withdrew him from the college and was imprisoned for breaking his contract. While at the college Giovanni Felice sang the roles of Clio and Eternità in the opera Amor pudico, produced at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in February 1614 by Cardinal Montalto. On 14 December 1618 Sances was in Padua, from where he wrote to the rector of the Collegio Germanico stating that he had been travelling in the service of a patron (unnamed). In 1633 he dedicated two volumes of cantatas to the Marquis Pio Enea degli Obizzi, who also employed him as composer of Ermiona, an ‘introduction to a tournament on foot and on horse, and to a ballet’, given at Padua on 11 April 1636 with Sances himself in the role of Cadmus. In the dedication to his Capricci poetici (1649) he referred to services that he had rendered to Nicolo Sagredo ‘many years ago’ in Venice; the suggestion that he worked for a time at S Petronio, Bologna, however, seems to be unfounded. By December 1636 he was a tenor in the chapel of the Emperor Ferdinand II, and he continued to serve at the imperial court in Vienna under Ferdinand III and Leopold I. He married Anna Ludwig on 27 March 1642, was appointed assistant Kapellmeister on 1 October 1649, and on 16 April 1669 succeeded Bertali as Kapellmeister. He held that position until his death in spite of severe illness. He was ennobled by Leopold I in 1669. During his service in Vienna he was active as a composer of sacred music, operas, sepolcri and secular chamber music.