Urio, Francesco Antonio

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Urio, Francesco Antonio

Urio, Francesco Antonio, Italian composer; b. Milan, c. 1631; d. there, c. 1719. He became a Franciscan friar. He served as maestro di cappella at Spoleto Cathedral (1679), in Urbino (1681-83), in Assisi, in Genoa, at the Basilica de’ Santi Dodici Apostoli in Rome (1690), at I Frari in Venice (1697), and at S. Francesco in Milan (1715-19). He publ. Motetti di concerto a2, 3, e4 voci con violini e senza,op.l (Rome, 1690) and Salmi concertati a3 voci con violini,op.2 (Bologna, 1697), and also composed several oratorios and a Te Deum, from which Handel “borrowed” numerous themes, chiefly for his Dettingen Te Deum,and also for his Saul and Israel in Egypt. Urio’s Te Deum was publ. by Chrysander in Denkmäler der Tonkunst (Vol. V, Bergedorf, near Hamburg, 1871; later publ. as Supplement 2 of Handel’s complete works).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire