Asti

He was a French composer and music critic. A prolific author of compositions for opera and ballet, he is famous for his ballet Giselle, as well as for the Christmas song Minuit chrétiens (1847) also known as Cantique de Noël or Oh Holy Night in the English version.

Albinoni was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period, universally considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music. His works are notable for intellectual depth, mastery of technical and expressive means and for artistic beauty.

Bartolucci was a cardinal, composer and director of Italian choir. Perpetual Master of the Pontifical Sistine Music Chapel and academic of Santa Cecilia, he is known in music, both as a composer and as a conductor. Considered one of the most authoritative interpreters of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, he performed numerous performances all over the world with the choir of the Sistine Chapel.

Ludwig van ​Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in Western art music, Beethoven was the last major representative of Viennese classicism and is considered one of the most famous and influential composers of all time. Listed among the greatest geniuses in the history of music, despite the deafness that struck him before he turned thirty, he continued undeterred to compose, conduct and play.

Giovanni Ambrogio Bissone, chapel master of Vercelli cathedral from 1687 to 1726, represents one of the greatest exponents of Vercelli musical education of the modern age.

Originally from Casale Monferrato, he became a beneficed canon of Vercelli in 1712. Many masses survive this important figure in the history of Savoyard music, who deserves to be much better known.

Giacinto Calderara was born in Casale Monferrato March 12, 1729. Already famous at the age of twenty years of age, he was appointed by the Chapter of Asti Cathedral as director the secular Cappella dei Putti. He held this position until his death on September 16, 1803. He was married, and had eight children. He wrote hundreds of compositions, almost all of a sacred nature.

Charpentier was a French composer of the Baroque period and probably the greatest exponent of French sacred music of his period; his contemporaries dubbed him "the phoenix of France". The “Messe de minuit” is perhaps one of his most original compositions.

Couperin was a Baroque composer, harpsichordist and French organist. “In the placid night” is his famous composition, even if the origin of the piece is very uncertain and the attribution to Couperin leaves some doubts.

Viadana was an Italian composer, teacher, and Franciscan friar of the Order of Friars Minor. He mainly composed sacred music: masses, psalms, magnificats, motets and lamentations; he also wrote two books of secular songs and a book of eight-part musical Symphonies.

Jacob de Haan is a Dutch composer, author of pieces for band and wind orchestras. In particular, the Missa brevis and the Missa Sancta Cecilia.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori was an Italian Catholic bishop, spiritual writer, composer, musician, artist, poet, lawyer, scholastic philosopher, and theologian. Founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, author of literary, theological works and famous melodies. Beatified in 1816, he was proclaimed a saint in 1839 and declared Doctor of the Church in 1871. He was also a composer of many Italian and Neapolitan songs, including the famous Christmas carol “Tu scendi dalle stelle”.

De Victoria was the most famous composer in 16th-century Spain, and was one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. Active mainly in Italy, he was the most famous Spanish musician of the time and one of the most important composers of sacred music in Europe.

During the eighteenth century he was considered one of the most important and representative figures of the European music scene: it is very significant that Jean Jacques Rousseau came to define him, with one of those passionate and certainly excessive judgments that were his own, "le plus grand harmoniste d 'Italie, c'est-à-dire du monde ".

Dvořák was a Czech composer of Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. His works include operas, symphonic, choral and chamber music. His best-known works include his New World Symphony, the Slavonic Dances, "American" String Quartet, and Cello Concerto in B minor.

Duke Ellington is considered one of the greatest composers in any 20th Century genre. His influence on generations of jazz musicians, from white orchestras to less conventional avant-garde formations has been huge and lasting. He composed three Sacred Concerts re-worked subsequently into a single Sacred Concert for choir and orchestra.

Probably a priest born in Fossano, he gained some success as a composer in Turin. After his death in 1771, Fenoglio's musical manuscripts were collected – by means of which we know little or nothing - in the British Library in London.

Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. With Debussy, Ravel and Saint-Saëns, he is one of the great French musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His The Requiem, Op. 48, was not composed in memory of a particular person, but as Fauré said, only for the pleasure of doing so. Many people describe it as a lullaby of death.

Considered among the "wise" composers of his century, he was probably a priest born in Fossano. In Turin he obtained some professional satisfactions. After the death of the religious, which took place in 1771, Fenoglio's musical background came - following mostly unknown ways - to the British Library in London.

Graduated in Organ and Organ Composition, researcher and scholar of the ancient musical traditions of Asti, he has published essays on composers active in Asti and its territory. Also active as a composer, he wrote the Ludus Natalis, the Oratorio Emmanuel, a liturgical Drama of the Nativity, the Opera I Magi for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Masses, and other liturgical pieces.

Gallus was born in Slovenia which he left when he was still young. He was a member of the court chapel in Vienna and chapel master (Kapellmeister) of the bishop of Olomouc. From 1585 until his death, he worked in Prague as an organist. His Ave Maria at 4 is famous (often mistakenly attributed to Victoria).

Gruber was an Austrian primary school teacher, church organist and composer in the village of Arnsdorf, who is best known for composing the music to Stille Nacht (Silent Night). on the text of Joseph Mohr.

Georg Friedrich Händel was a German-born, later British, composer of the Baroque period, who spent most of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, hymns, and organ concerts. Händel received critical training in Halle, Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712.

Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (also spelled Ingegnieri, Ingignieri, Ingignero, Inzegneri) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance. He was born in Verona and died in Cremona. Even though he spent most of his life working in northern Italy, because of his stylistic similarity to Palestrina he is often considered to be a member of the Roman School of polyphonic church music. He is also famous as the teacher of Claudio Monteverdi.

He was a German scholar: today known mainly as a composer, he was also active as a novelist, translator, lawyer and music theorist, being able to combine, even if late in life, these activities with the duties of his official position as Cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig, which he occupied for 21 years.

Lécot composed three cantatas, an Oratorio and several liturgical chants (Gloria and Sanctus of Lourdes, the hymn for the Jubilee 2000). He is the director of the International Festival of Sacred Music that takes place in Lourdes and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters to the Pantheon.

Sergio Marcianò was an Italian priest, composer and organist. He was professor of organ and organ composition at the Antonio Vivaldi Conservatory in Alessandria (Italy). His musical output was prolific both in composition and in concert performances across Europe.

After having been a member of the college of beneficial canons of the cathedral of Vercelli from 1695 to 1712, he directed the musical chapel of the cathedral of Turin between 1712 and 1760 (the year of his death).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian musician, prolific and influential composer of the classical era, who is universally recognized as the author of compositions of extraordinary artistic value. Mozart is counted among the greatest geniuses in the history of music, endowed with rare and precocious talent.

Orff was a German composer, famous mainly for the Carmina Burana (1937) and for the Catulli Carmina (1943). Composer of the best known of his generation, he developed a strongly rhythmic, massive language, avoiding harmonistic and contrapuntal complications.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music. Palestrina was highly esteemed both in life and after his death; his compositions became an unsurpassed model of the Renaissance sacred vocal polyphony of the Roman Church.

Perosi was an Italian priest and composer. He was known for his numerous oratorios, polyphonic masses and motets. His oratorios merge verismo melodies with Renaissance polyphony, baroque constructions and plainchant inspirations.

Giacomo Puccini was a famous Italian composer, considered one of the greatest opera composer in history. His four-part Mass (also known by the apocryphal name of Messa di Gloria) is a four-part orchestral and choir mass, with tenor and baritone soloists, composed in 1880.

Among the great composers of Baroque music, there is little biographical information about Henry Purcell. His own work plunged into obscurity for a long time and was rediscovered only in the twentieth century, helping to give new vigor to the British compositional school.

Saint-Saens was a French composer, pianist and organist. His works have been defined as logical and clean, smooth, professional and never excessive. He has often been denounced as "the most German of all French composers", perhaps due to his fantastic skill in thematic development.

Schnabel's compositional work consist mainly of instrumental church music. Schnabel's most famous work is based on material that he found in the archives of the Wrocław cathedral by an unknown composer of the early 18th century. The piece is known as Transeamus usque Bethlehem and this is now part of the standard repertoire of many church choirs.

Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer and pianist of the Romantic period and widely regarded as one of the greatest classical music composers in the world. Schubert was extremely prolific during his short lifetime. His output consists of over 600 secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music, all before he died at age 31.

A graduate in piano, organ and composition, he directed the choirs of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and of the Augusteo and taught polyphonic-vocal composition at the Rome Conservatory. Bonaventura Somma was a gifted, organised, complete and up-to-date musician; a flower of sacred music. His music is elegant, always cordial, even when “modern”, and open to broad cultural and spiritual horizons.

Trabattone was maestro di cappella of the Turin Cathedral and of the Savoy court from 1632 to 1682. The five-part motet “Omnes Sitientes” is a work collected by Giovanni Carisio in the anthology "Concerti Sacri" printed in Venice in 1664 and preserved in the capitular archives of the Cathedral of Asti.

Jacquet Van Berchem was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance, a member of the Flemish Franc School, was particularly active in Italy. He was famous in mid-16th-century Italy for his madrigals, approximately 200 of which were printed in Venice, some in multiple printings due to their considerable popularity.

Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest.

He is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers. His influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers.

Wade was an English hymnist who is sometimes credited with writing and composing the hymn "Adeste Fideles" (which was later translated to "O Come All Ye Faithful") as the earliest copies of the hymn all bear his signature, even though the actual authorship of the hymn remains uncertain.