Eximeno (y Pujades), Antonio
Eximeno (y Pujades), Antonio
Eximeno (y Pujades), Antonio, important Spanish writer on music; b. Valencia, Sept. 26, 1729; d. Rome, June 9, 1808. He entered the Soc. of Jesus at the age of 16. He became a prof, of rhetoric at the Univ. of Valencia, and in 1764 was appointed prof, of mathematics at the military academy in Segovia. When the Jesuits were expelled from Spain in 1767, he went to Rome, and in 1768 began to study music. In 1774 he publ. Dell’ origine e delle regole della musica colla storia del suo progresso, decadenza e rinnovazione (Rome; Sp. tr. by Gutierrez, 3 vols., 1776), in which he protested against pedantic rules and argued that music should be based on the natural rules of prosody. His theories were strongly controverted, especially by Padre Martini. In answer to the latter, Eximeno publ. Dubbio di Antonio Eximeno sopra il Saggio fondamentale, pratico di contrappunto del reverendissimo Padre Maestro Giambattista Martini (Rome, 1775). His dictum that the national song should serve as a basis for the art-music of each country was taken up by Pedrell and led to the nationalist movement in modern Spanish music. Eximeno also wrote a satirical musical novel, Don Lazarillo Vizcardi, directed against the theories of Pietro Cerone (publ. by Barbieri, 2 vols., 1872–73).
Bibliography
E Pedrell, Padre A. E. (Madrid, 1920).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire