Pedro António Avondano (1714-1782): Sonatas

00:00 Sonata em Fá maior: Allegro - (Adagio) - (Menuete)
11:40 Sonata em Ré maior: Moderato, Allegro - Andante - Menuete
22:03 Sonata em Dó maior: (Allegro) - Andante - Allegro
31:25 Sonata em Sol maior: Allegro - Menuete
43:58 Sonata em Dó maior: Allegro - (Menuete)
51:11 Sonata em Sol maior
55:46 Sonata em Lá maior: Allegro con spirito - Presto, Presto

Rosana Lanzelotte, harpsichord (José Calisto, Portugal, 1780)

Date and place of recording: EUA, National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota; August 1-3, 2002

Arte: Marquês de Pombal apresentando os planos de Lisboa (1766), por Louis-Michel van Loo (1707-1771)

Pedro António Avondano was born in Lisbon, in 1714, and died in the same city in 1782. His father was Pietro Giorgio Avondano, a violinist from Genoa who, amongst the many Italian virtuosos who had been hired at high cost for the service of King John V of Portugal, eventually rose to the rank of first violinist of the orchestra of the Portuguese Royal Chamber. The Baroque tradition demanded that children were trained in the family trade, and the Avondano family was no exception to this rule, several of its members ultimately becoming leading exponents of Portuguese musical life throughout the eighteenth century. Thus, the young Pedro António learned to play the violin with his father, and in due time became himself a distinguished violinist in the royal orchestra.

Much of the documentation relating to the early years of his career disappeared in the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake, but by the beginning of the 1760s he was undoubtedly one of the most influential musicians in Lisbon, to such extent that the meeting for the approval of the new regulations of the Brotherhood of Saint Cecilia, the professional association to which every practicing musician in the Kingdom was required by law to belong, was held at his home on June 27, 1765. As this document was signed by no fewer than 152 musicians who took part in the meeting, we can understand how Avondano was able to host, in this same period, the regular meetings of the so-called ¨Assembleia das Nações Estrangeiras¨, a sort of social club for British and other foreign residents of Lisbon, of which the English traveller Richard Twiss has left us a description in 1772: ¨There are two long rooms, where the British Factory assemble twice a week, during the winter, to dance and play at cards. The minuets composed by Don Pedro Antonio Avondano, who lives here, are much esteemed¨.

Avondano´s connection with the British merchant community in Lisbon seems to be the reason why he was able to publish in London, most likely in 1770-72, two printed collections of minuets for two treble instruments and continuo, probably the same that were mentioned by Twiss in the description quoted above: first the ¨Eighteen entirely new Lisbon Minuets for Two Violins and a Bass, Selected out of the Book of Minuets composed for, and play´d at the British Factory Ball¨, and immediately afterwards ¨A Second Set of Twenty-Two Lisbon Minuets for Two Violins and a Bass¨. His compisitional output, however, was not limited to these ballroom pieces: José Mazza, a late eighteenth-century biographer who compiled a ¨Dictionary of Portuguese Musicians¨ a few years after Pedro António´s death, states that the latter ¨was a violinist in the Royal Chamber and an excellent composer. His music had great harmony and much softness. He composed Psalms, Masses, a Te Deum, many sonatas for instruments and harpsichord tocatas. He also wrote the music of the comic opera Il Mondo della Luna, which was performed at [the royal palace of] Salvaterra¨.

Indeed, Avondano had at least two oratorios and several sacred music settings sung by the Royal Chapel, as well as the above-mentioned opera Il Mondo della Luna performed at the King´s country residence of Salvaterra in 1765. Besides these achievements at Court and the fact that he belonged to the prestigious (and very well paid) orchestra of the Royal Chamber, several sources mention that he was in constant demand for sacred and secular performances promoted by church authorities and by wealthy sponsors of the aristocracy and the upper middle class. Together with his lucrative business of hosting the social gatherings and balls of the foreign colony, the income generated by these multiple professional activities was substantial enough to allow him in 1767 to buy the dignity of Knight of the Order of Christ from a retired army officer to which it had been recently granted - a business transaction entirely legal according to the laws of the Ancien Régime and as such duly authorized by King Joseph I. Perhaps because of his advanced age he seems to have gradually fallen out of musical favour in courtly circles under Queen Mary I, who inherited the trone in 1777, with no record of any new operas of his composition being performed at Court after that date.

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