A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Eximeno, Antonio

EXIMENO, Antonio, Spanish Jesuit, born 1732 at Balbastro in Arragon. Having studied mathematics and music at Salamanca he became professor of both sciences at Segovia. On the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain he settled in Rome, and died there in 1798. His work 'Dell' origine della musica, colla storia del suo progresso, decadenza, e rinovazione' contains the germ of the theories afterwards elaborated by Wagner, and at the time raised a host of polemical writings, to which even Padre Martini contributed his share. He proposed to abolish the strict laws of counterpoint and harmony, and apply the rules of prosody to musical composition. He was the first scientific exponent of the doctrine that the aim of music is to express emotion, and thus exercised considerable influence on musical aesthetics. His contemporaries stigmatised his book as an 'extraordinary romance, in which he seeks to destroy music without being able to reconstruct it'—a verdict which curiously anticipates that often passed upon Wagner in our own day.

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