About Antonio Caldara

Today Antonio Caldara is not a name many would recognise let alone regard as one of the 'great' composers of the Baroque, yet during his own lifetime and long after his death he was held in high esteem by composers and theoreticians alike. Johann Sebastian Bach, for example is known to have made a copy of a Magnificat by Caldara to which he added a two-violin accompaniment to the "Suscepit Israel" section. According to Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann in his early years took Caldara as a model for his church and instrumental music. Franz Joseph Haydn, who was taken to Vienna by Georg Reutter, one of Caldara's pupils, sang many of his sacred works when he was a choirboy at St. Stephens and possessed copies of two of Caldara's Masses. Wolfgang Mozart made use of some of Caldara's six hundred canons in KV555, 557 and 562. Ludwig van Beethoven copied several contrapuntal examples by Caldara from a publication by his teacher Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, and Johannes Brahms is known to have possessed a copy of some of Caldara's canons.