Johann Simon Mayr was a German composer and music teacher. He was one of the greatest opera composers in Europe in the last decade of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th.
His musical activity mainly took place in Italy, where he was better known as Giovanni Simone Mayr. He was the second child of Josef Mayr, a schoolteacher and organist, and Maria Anna Prantmayer, a brewer’s daughter from Augsburg.
Mayr received his early musical education from his father, demonstrating an outstanding predisposition for it. He composed some early Lieder and became a member of the choir of the church where his father worked.
In 1781 he began to study law and theology at the University of Ingolstadt, where he taught himself various orchestral instruments and supported himself by playing the organ. His first published work, 12 Lieder bei dem Clavier zu singen, appeared in Regensburg in 1786.
The following year he went to Poschiavo, Switzerland, and in 1789, he was in Bergamo, where he studied with Carlo Lenzi, then maestro di cappella at Santa Maria Maggiore. However, all this did not satisfy the Bavarian composer, who was on the verge of leaving Italy and returning to Ingolstadt.
However, Count Pesenti convinced him to go to Venice to study with Ferdinando Bertoni, maestro di cappella of San Marco and a well-known composer of sacred music. Venice provided an ideal opportunity to hear a broad range of Italian sacred, theatrical and instrumental music.
His first operas were enormously successful and quickly spread his reputation throughout Europe. He received copious offers from Milan, Naples, Rome, London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Dresden and Paris, where Napoleon offered him the post of maître de chapelle at the imperial court. Mayr refused all these coveted positions and only accepted the “modest” offer in 1802 to become a maestro di cappella at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, where he had been a student in his youth.
Gaetano Donizetti was one of his first students and, undoubtedly, the most illustrious: He entered the school in 1806 and remained there for eight years. Mayr withdrew from the theatre after the production of his last opera, Demetrio, in 1824.
From this moment on, he dedicated himself exclusively to the composition of sacred music for the Basilica of Bergamo, arranging performances of works by the Viennese masters, and collaborating with the Gazzetta musicale di Milano. From 1822, he began to be more and more afflicted by cataracts in his eyes; after the failed operation attempt in 1826, his sight deteriorated more and more until it led to almost total blindness. In 1845, Mayr died at his home in Bergamo at the age of 82.
The 12 Bagatelle a 3 for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon has a basset horn in the original score. In this case, the bassoon was chosen as a substitute because of its use in the performances of the same type of bagatellas of the time.
This work highlights Mayr’s exceptional ability to write for wind instruments. There are some Italianate passages we can find in the last bagatella in which the first theme quotes the “Scherzo” of the Sixth Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Johann Simon Mayr: 12 Bagatelle a 3
