CAVALLI, FRANCESCO

Baroque opera and church composer (original name, Pier Francesco Caletto-Bruno); b. Crema (Lombardy), Italy, Feb. 14, 1602; d. Venice, Jan. 17, 1676. He received musical training under his father, G. B. Caletto, an organist, and in March 1616 undertook studies with monteverdi in Venice, adopting the surname of Federigo Cavalli, the patrician who made his education possible. He spent his life in Venice, serving at San Marco as singer, organist, or maestro di cappella. While he was the leading exponent of early Venetian opera, he composed also a number of Masses and motets in various forms, from solo monodies to two-choir works, all in the stile moderno. These works, though dramatic, are not operatic, and it is clear that Cavalli distinguished between church and stage music. In the smaller ones there are devices common to less pretentious concertato music, and in the polychoral works there is the fullness of sound characteristic of Venetian religious music of that time. Like almost all his sacred music, his unpublished Requiem, reputedly a work of great solemnity, is still unavailable in a modern edition.

Bibliography: a. a. abert, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume 10 v. (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 2:926–932. e. j. wellesz, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. e. blom 9 v. (London 1954) 2:128–132. w. s. newman, The Sonata in the Baroque Era (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1959). p. h. lÁng, Music in Western Civilization (New York 1941). m. f. bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (New York 1947). d. j. grout, A Short History of Opera 2 v. (New York 1965). m. n. clinkscale, "Pier Francesco Cavalli's Xerse " (Ph.D. diss. University of Minnesota, 1970); "Francesco (born Pietro Francesco Caletti) Cavalli" in International Dictionary of Opera 2 v. ed. c. s. larue (Detroit 1993) 229–232. j. glover, Cavalli (London 1978). p. g. jeffrey, "The Autograph Manuscripts of Francesco Cavalli" (Ph.D. diss. Princeton University, 1980). d. m. randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996) 146–147. n. slonimsky, ed. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Eighth Edition (New York 1992) 309. t. walker, "Francesco Cavalli" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 4, ed. s. sadie (New York 1980) 24–34.

[t. culley]