1667–1740 · Baroque
Antonio Lotti (1667–1740) was a Venetian Baroque composer, singer and organist who spent most of his life at St Mark's Basilica, eventually becoming its maestro di cappella. He also spent two years at the Dresden court, where several of his operas were staged. Today players mostly meet him through his choral sacred music, such as Crucifixus.
Antonio Lotti was a Baroque-era composer who worked in Venice and in German lands; he wrote eight oratorios, twenty-four operas and a considerable amount of sacred music. He was born in Venice on 5 January 1667, the son of Matteo Lotti and Marina Gasparin. At the time, his father was serving as court Kapellmeister in Hanover, which led older reference works to give either Venice or Hanover as his birthplace. The question was settled by a later-discovered birth record. It is also known that the boy was baptised on 25 January at the church of St Marina, where his parents had married in 1662. Lotti himself called himself a Venetian.
Lotti's teacher in Venice is said to have been maestro Giovanni Legrenzi, who served at St Mark's Basilica; Lodovico Fuga, who worked there too, is also named among his teachers.
Lotti began his career at St Mark's Basilica as an alto, then in 1690 became assistant organist; two years later he became second organist, and from 1704 first organist of the basilica. In those same years, between 1702 and 1717, seventeen of his operas were staged.
From 1695 Lotti undertook to compose music every year for the feast of Pentecost for the Scuola dello Spirito Santo confraternity, a duty he carried out for at least eight years. During that time he changed the balance between singers and instrumentalists in the confraternity's music, reflecting a broader shift then under way in the style of sacred music.
In 1717 Friedrich Augustus, Elector of Saxony, invited Lotti to Dresden: while Lotti was still in Venice, the Elector had arranged with him to write music for an Italian opera troupe he was assembling at his court. Lotti spent two years in Dresden, from 1717 to 1719. His wife, the soprano Santa Stella, travelled there with him, along with several singers and a librettist.
Three of his operas were staged in Dresden — Teofane, Giove in Argo and Ascanio; one of them opened the new Dresden opera house in 1719. The librettos for Teofane and Giove in Argo were written by Antonio Maria Lucchini.
In 1719 Lotti returned to Venice, and from then on gave up secular music entirely, concentrating on sacred genres — masses, motets and other church works. From 1736 he led the chapel of St Mark's as maestro di cappella, with an annual salary set at 400 ducats.
Among Lotti's pupils are named Benedetto Marcello, Baldassare Galuppi, Francesco Gasparini and Giovanni Battista Pescetti; Jan Dismas Zelenka is also considered to have been his student.
Antonio Lotti died in Venice on 5 January 1740 — on his seventy-third birthday. He was buried in the church of San Geminiano; it is believed his remains were moved elsewhere before Napoleon had the church demolished in 1807, but their present location is unknown.
Lotti's output is conventionally divided into two periods — before and after his return from Dresden. In the first period he wrote both secular and sacred music; in the second, exclusively sacred. Even so, his output includes a fair number of secular works.
Lotti wrote twenty-four operas for Venice, Vienna and Dresden. Eight have survived complete: Giove in Argo, Teofane, Ascanio, Alessandro Severo, Porsenna, Foca superbo, Costantino and Polidoro. Of another nine, only parts survive, and seven are considered lost. He also wrote eight oratorios, of which two survive — Il voto crudele and L'umiltà coronata in Esther.
Some of his smaller secular pieces were collected in Duetti, terzetti e madrigali a più voci, dedicated to Emperor Leopold I.
After returning from Dresden, Lotti wrote mostly sacred music: masses, motets, antiphons, a Miserere. Among them is the Missa Sapientiae. His best-known work is the eight-voice Crucifixus.
Lotti wrote in varied styles: some of his sacred choral scores are unaccompanied, others are in the concertato style, with strings, continuo, and occasionally oboes and trumpets. His later works show traits of a style regarded as transitional between the Baroque and the Classical.