João Rodrigues Esteves

João Rodrigues Esteves was a Portuguese author of the first eighteenth hundred years and an integral specialist of Latin sacred structure whose surviving functions quantity about 100. Most of his manuscripts can be found in Portuguese libraries, most of them in the Lisbon Cathedral archive. All that’s known about Esteves is situated in the marginalia of the manuscripts; the first reference to him times from 1719, when he was delivered to Rome beneath the aegis of Ruler João V to review with composer Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni. He was back Portugal by 1726, nonetheless it wasn’t until 1729 that he was set up as grasp of music in the Basilica de Santa Maria, a chapel mounted on the primary body of Lisbon Cathedral. Some manuscripts had been delivered by Esteves from Rome to Lisbon, and some others can be found in Evora and in the ducal palace of Vila Viçosa. After Domenico Scarlatti and Carlos Seixas, Esteves was the main composer in Portugal in the 1st half from the eighteenth hundred years. He discovered his lessons with Pitoni well and his Latin Chapel music very easily equals, or surpasses, the grade of known function by his grasp. Although in later on works it would appear that Esteves started to bow towards the pressure of virtuosic requirements as well as the recognition of operatic vocal composing, for almost all his result Esteves stubbornly kept onto the stile antico as used in the hundred years before his personal. Among Esteves’ perhaps most obviously compositions certainly are a Miserere in 12 voices, eight Responsories for the Xmas time of year in eight voices and violin, and a treatise on continuo realization, Regras de acompanhar (1719), his just purely instrumental function. Although it shows up that Esteves’ function were able to survive the catastrophic earthquake, fireplace, and tsunami that stated 30,000 to 60,000 lives and leveled Lisbon to the bottom on November 1, 1755, it appears the composer himself might possibly not have, as there is absolutely no reference to him after 1751 in virtually any known manuscripts or public record information.