Antoni

Composer and organist

He was admitted at the Escolania de Montserrat in 1736 where he was a pupil of Kapellmeister Benet Esteve and organist Benet Valls. In 1946, at the age of 17, he was appointed Kapellmeister at the cathedral of Lleida and La Seu d'Urgell. In 1752, he moved to the monastery of El Escorial where he joined as a Hieronymite monk. He studied with D. Scarlatti and José de Nebra atthe Madrid court. Highly valued by the royal family, he was the teacher of Antonio and Gabriel, children of Carlos III. Among his output there are over two hundred sonatas for keyboard, six quintets for strings and organ (1776), six concerti for two keyboards, as well as an important number of religious compositions that combine the gallant style with the old polyphonic style and integrate Hispanic popular forms. He composed some music for the stage (to texts by Calderón de la Barca) and wrote the treatise Llave de la modulación y antigüedades de la Música (1762), where he formulated theories about the modulation and acoustics of the then most innovative intervals.