1741-50, and was later connected with monasteries. He was chiefly a church composer, with about 30 excellent masses and other works, besides some instrumental pieces.
A few other Austrian church composers should be mentioned, such as Bohuslaw Czernohorsky (d. 1740), a Bohemian Minorite, who worked successively at Padua, Assisi and finally Prague, and who was not only a noted teacher (as of Tartini, Gluck and Tuma), but a superior sacred composer (works mostly destroyed by fire in 1754); and Johann Ernst Eberlin (d. 1762), a Swabian of whose life little is known except that from 1725 he was in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg as organist and choirmaster, and whose able organ and church works, including fugues, toccatas, masses, etc., and 13 oratorios, rank among the best of the period.
122. In Italy.—As will be seen, the spirit and methods of the opera were overwhelmingly dominant in Italy throughout the century. Between these and the older ideals of a cappella church music there was a gap so wide that hardly any composers could bridge it successfully. A limited number essayed to resist the prevailing drift toward theatric music entirely and to confine themselves to sacred works in something like the old style, but without notable success. Many of the leading opera-writers, no doubt, were diligent composers of masses, litanies, psalms and other ritual music, but only a few of them proved fully sensitive to the differences between church and concert music, or equally expert in both. Most of them, however, undertook oratorios and cantatas upon Biblical subjects or episodes in the legends of the saints, but the reason for this was evidently that such works called for methods that were at least partially dramatic.
As contrasted with their German contemporaries, all Italian composers of this and later periods show the lack of those remarkable restraining and modifying influences in sacred writing that were influential in northern Europe. They had behind them no such traditions of majestic organ polyphony or of fervent congregational singing, and the public they addressed was not permeated by any similar breadth of religious thoughtfulness or depth of homely piety. The conditions of their practical work were different, and it is not strange, with all their artistic ability, that their church compositions seldom rise to the height of permanent value.
In the following notes, details are given only where the emphasis of the
composer's work was wholly or mainly laid upon sacred composition. In
other cases such details will be found in later sections regarding the opera.
