A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Durante, Francesco
DURANTE, Francesco, born at Frattamaggiore, Naples, March 15, 1684, a year before Handel and Bach. As a boy he entered the 'Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesu Cristo,' passed to that of S. Onofrio under A. Scarlatti, then perhaps (though this is doubtful) to Rome for five years' study under Pitoni and Pasquini. In 1718 became head of S. Onofrio, and in 1742 relinquished that post to succeed Porpora at the Conservatorio Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples, in which position he died Aug. 13, 1755. Durante was a man of singularly reserved and uncouth manners, yet he was three times married, and his pupils were not only numerous and very distinguished, but appear to have been much attached to him. His salary at S. Maria was but 10 ducats a month—not £20 [App. p.619 "about £55"] per annum—but out of it he contrived to add a chapel to the church of St. Antonio in his native town, with a statue of the archangel Gabriel, bearing his own name. He himself composed only for the church, but his scholars, Traetta, Vinci, Jomelli, Piccinni, Sacchini, Guglielmi, and Paisiello, were all great opera writers, and may be said to have occupied the stage of Europe during the last half of the 18th century to the exclusion of every one but Gluck and Mozart. The library of the Conservatoire at Paris contains a large collection of his works. The list, as given by Fétis, comprises 13 masses and credos; 16 psalms; hymns, motets, litanies, etc., to the number of 28. These are written for various numbers of voices from 3 to 9, occasionally with orchestra, but usually without. The Vienna library has in addition his Lamentations of Jeremiah, a so-called 'Pastoral-Mass' and other compositions.
His works have not been much published. The collections of Schlesinger, Rochlitz, and Commer, contain a few pieces—amongst them a Misericordias Domini for 8 voices, of which Hauptmann (Briefe an Hauser, ii. 112) speaks in high terms; and our own Fitzwilliam music has a Trio and a Chorus—but the bulk of them are still in MS. Durante and Leo are often spoken of as founders of the Neapolitan school, but it is difficult to understand this when they were preceded there by A. Scarlatti and Porpora.