Giuseppe Clemente dall'Abaco

Giuseppe Clemente dall'Abaco
(b Brussels, bap. 27 March 1710; d Arbizzano di Valpolicella, 31 Aug 1805).

Flemish composer and cellist of Italian descent, son of Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco. He was at first a pupil of his father, with whom his career has often been confused. The latter, employed at the Munich court, apparently sent his son to Venice to further his musical education; but on his return the young man could not find work in Bavaria, and on 29 March 1729 he joined the electoral chapel at Bonn as Titular-Kammerdiener und Hofmusikus mit dem Violoncell. On 26 August 1738 he was appointed director of the court chamber orchestra. In spite of his Bonn appointment he was able to travel, going to London and other English towns in 1740, and apparently to Vienna in 1749 when a work by him for five cellos was performed. In 1753 he left the court to go to Verona. He seems to have remained in contact with the Munich court, and on 22 September 1766 (VannesD) was created a baron. He died on his estate in Arbizzano di Valpolicella at the age of 95.

Dall'Abaco's cello sonatas, despite the advent of the new galant and pre-Classical styles, retain the gravity of the Baroque and the broad melodic span inherited, through his father, from Legrenzi, Bassani, Vitali and Lully (nearly 40, including many autograph and a few anonymous ones, are in GB-Lbl, three in D-Bsb and one in A-Wgm; he also wrote a cantata for the Bonn court, apparently now lost). His reputation, however, was mainly as an instrumentalist, and his fame as a composer did not match his father's. (M. Marsigny: Joseph Clemens Dall’Abaco (v.1708–1805) et la sonate pour violoncelle au 18e siècle, diss., U. of Louvain-la-Neuve, 1980)