Gift Shop CDs Description Pedro António Avondano Sonatas Lisbon: Portugaler Audiopro, 2005 (No. 2014-2) Much of the documentation relating to the early years of the career of Pedro António Avondano (1714-1782) was lost in the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake, but by the beginning of the 1760s, he was known to have been one of the most influential musicians in Lisbon. According to José Mazza, a late eighteenth-century biographer who compiled a Dictionary of Portuguese Musicians a few years after Pedro António's death, states that the latter, "was a violinist in the Royal Chamber and an excellent composer. His music had great harmony and much softness. He composed Psalms, Masses, a Te Deum, many sonatas for instruments and harpsichord toccatas. He also wrote the music of the comic opera Il Mondo della Luna, which was performed at [the royal palace of] Salvaterra." Today, Avondano's keyboard music survives mostly in manuscripts belonging to the National Libraries of Paris and Lisbon, but new sources are still quite likely to appear whenever the existant Portuguese keyboard repertoire of the second half of the eighteenth century is thoroughly surveyed. The works assembled for this recording can be seen as typical of a post-Baroque taste, mostly close to the Rococo and the Style Galant trends of European instrumental music in the 1750s and 60s. There are, however, suggestions of an expressive, somewhat "pre-Romantic" mood that nowadays we tend to associate exclusively with the German Empfindsamkeit composers such as Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, for instance, but which was in fact quite characteristic also for the mid-eighteenth-century Neapolitan Opera, a genre quite familiar to Portuguese composers of the period. [Source: Excerpts from the CD notes] Harpsichordist Rosa Lanzelotte recorded these seven Avondano sonatas on the NMM's harpsichord by José Calisto, Portugal, 1780 (NMM 6204), in 2002. Track List (click links below to hear MP3 excerpts)   Sonata in Fa Major   1. Allegro   2. [Adagio]   3. [Menuete] Sonata in Re Major   4. Moderato - Allegro   5. Andante   6. Menuete Sonata in Do Major    7. [Allegro]    8. Andante    9. Allegro Sonata in Sol Major   10. Allegro   11. Menuete Sonata in Do Major   12. Allegro   13. [Menuete] Sonata in Sol Major   14. Sonata Sonata in La Major   15. Allegro con Spirito   16. Presto - Presto   Duration:  62' Order #78:  $15.00 Return to CDs Return to Gift Shop National Music Museum The University of South Dakota 414 East Clark Street Vermillion, SD 57069 ©National Music Museum, 2006-2007 Most recent update: October 18, 2007 You are the 2,747th visitor to this page since April 28, 2006. The University of South Dakota Return to Top of Page