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Pietro Torri

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Wikipedia
Pietro Torri (Peschiera del Garda, c. 1665 or earlier – Munich, 6 July 1737) was an Italian Baroque composer.
From 1684 to 1688, Torri served as the organist and choirmaster of the Margrave of Bayreuth, and later entered into the service of the Elector of Bavaria Maximilian II Emanuel. In 1692 he followed the prince with some gentlemen of the court orchestra to the Spanish Netherlands and later settled with them in Brussels where Torri married the daughter of the ballet master François Rodier.
Over the following years he lived in Mons, Namur, Lille, Compiegne, and Valenciennes; where his compositions were performed.
In 1715 he returned to Munich, where he occasionally composed cantatas; and an opera annually. In 1726 Maximilian died, and his son Charles Albert succeeded him to the throne of Bavaria. For this occasion, Torri composed a musical tribute to the new ruler: the allegorical cantata Bavaria. This work alluded to an early Bavarian claim to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. On the death of Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei in 1732, he was finally officially appointed as choirmaster at the court of Bavaria. Charles Albert was elected emperor in 1726 as Charles VII Albert and Torri became a musician at the imperial court.
Along with about 50 operas, Torri wrote serenades, oratorios, cantatas, psalms, and a recorder sonata in C major. His most famous works for voices and orchestra include his Magnificat (for some time erroneously attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Lotti), Le Triomphe de la paix, a cantata celebrating the Treaty of Rastatt (1714), and a Te Deum for Maximilian II Emanuel. The rediscovery of Torri and revival of his works is largely due to the German composer Christoph Hammer, a musicologist and performer of early music.
Title page of the libretto of Lucio Vero (Munich 1720)
Title page of the libretto of Torri's Catone in Utica (Munich 1736)
Torri likely composed his Magnificat in C major for double choir and orchesta in the 1690s. The work is scored for double SATB choir, two trumpets, bassoon, strings (two violin parts and two viola parts) and basso continuo/organ.
The Magnificat in C major, BWV Anh. 30, is Johann Sebastian Bach's arrangement of Torri's Magnificat. In Bach's version of the work there are an additional trumpet and timpani.
Torri wrote more oratorios than any composer before George Frideric Handel (see also several dramatic oratorios mentioned above among Torri's dramatic works):
The Mus.ms. 30299 manuscript of the Berlin State Library not only contains a copy of Torri's Magnificat, but also following sacred music, from the same composer:
The Trastulli (trifles) is a collection of 60 short vocal works surviving in a four-volume autograph, written between 1692 and 1701. The first of these volumes contains 14 chamber cantatas, each consisting exclusively of a recitative and a da capo aria. The other volumes contain such arias without recitative. The Trastulli are, at least in part, extracted from larger vocal works: