Loading details…
Artist
Jaume Casellas
1+ albums
catalan18th century
about
Jaume Casellas (Valls, 1690 - Toledo, 1764) was a Catalan composer of the Baroque, master of chapel for 29 years (1733-1762) of the Cathedral of Toledo, primacy of Spain. At that time the position was one of the most prestigious composers, musically speaking, on the peninsula. It is believed that Casellas entered as a child as a singer (seise) in the Basilica of Santa María del Mar in Barcelona, where he learned music with Luis Serra and received his ecclesiastical training. There he assimilated the influence of Italian music and central Europe thanks to the short but significant presence of the court of Archduke Charles in Barcelona. After a brief period in Granollers, he practiced the magisterium in the monastery of San Juan de las Abadesas until April 1715.4 In 1715, after the War of Succession, Casellas succeeded Serra as a chapel master in Santa María del Mar, where he would stay eighteen years. In 1733, in an opposition in which he faced other important chapel masters, he obtained mastery in the Cathedral of Toledo, where he would work until 1762, two years before his death. In 1762 he signed the approval of the theoretical work entitled Key to Modulation and Antiquities of Music, by Antonio Soler. A series of letters from him are preserved in Bologna in which he criticizes the excessive Italian influence of the music of Josep Duran, chapel master of the Cathedral of Barcelona. He wrote numerous oratorios, some of which were interpreted in Santa María del Mar (Betul