Calegari, Antonio

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Calegari, Antonio

Calegari, Antonio, Italian organist, conductor, music theorist, and composer; b. Padua, Feb. 17, 1757; d. there, July 22, 1828. He studied with Scalabrin and Betoni in Venice; was active as a composer there and in Padua. He was a conductor at the Teatro Nuovo in Padua (c. 1790-96), then was made organist (1801) and maestro di cappella (1814) at the church of S. Antonio there. He brought out three operas in Venice: Le Sorelle rivali (1784), L’amor soldato (1786), and 11 matrimonio scoperto (1789); the authorship of all three is dubious, the last perhaps attributable to Luigi Caligari. Antonio Calegari publ, a curious treatise on composition, Gioco pittagorico musicale (Venice, 1801), which was republ. in Paris, during his residence there, as L’Art de composer la musique sans en connaître les éléments (1802). A harmonic system, Sistema armonico (1829), and a vocal method, Modi generali del canto (1836), were publ. posth.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire