A Thematic Catalogue of the Orchestral Works of Giuseppe Matteo Alberti (1685–1751)

Abstract

His contemporaries did not find Giuseppe Matteo Alberti a composer out of the ordinary. In the diary of the Bolognese apothecary Ubaldo Zanetti where his death is noted he is described prosaically as ‘secondo violino e compositore riguardevole di musica’. In England, where his music was especially well disseminated as a result of its publication by Walsh in London and Le Cène in Amsterdam, it was regarded as fodder for less advanced players. Burney remarks that his twelve Sinfonie a quattro, ‘being slight and easy, were much played in England about fifty years ago, particularly in provincial concerts’. Less kindly, Avison placed him among the lowest class of composers (his companions in ignominy being Vivaldi, Tessarini and Locatelli) – those ‘whose compositions, being equally defective in various harmony and true invention, are only a fit amusement for children’. In his Remarks on Mr. Avison's Essay on Musical Expression William Hayes did his best to salvage Vivaldi's reputation - at the expense of the other three composers, whose ‘servile, mean copy’ he contrasted with Vivaldi's ‘original’.