JOMMELLI, NICCOLÒ. — Composer, b. at Aversa on 10 September 1714, d. at Naples on 25 August 1774. He first studied with Canon Muzzillo, choirmaster of the cathedral of Aversa, then, in 1730, at Naples, where among his teachers were Durante, Feo, and Leo. In 1736 he was appointed maestro di cappella to the Marquis Del Vasto Avalos, and in 1740 he went to Rome, where he found a new patron: Heinrich Benedict, Duke of York. He subsequently studied in Bologna with Fr. Martini.
In 1743 he was summoned to Venice, where he remained for four years directing the Conservatorio degli Incurabili and producing a great deal of religious music, including the oratorio La Betulia liberata on a text by Metastasio, a four-part Mass, a Laudate pueri, etc. In 1747 he returned to Rome, where in 1749 he wrote the oratorio La Passione di N. S. Gesù Cristo, dedicating it to his former patron, the Duke of York, who had meanwhile become a cardinal; through the benevolence of another influential patron, Cardinal Alessandro Albani, nephew of Clement XI, J. was appointed assistant maestro of the Cappella Giulia at St Peter’s (1749) and shortly afterward was summoned to the court of Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna, where he met Metastasio. In 1750 he returned to Rome and resumed his position at St Peter’s, composing sacred music and operas. He then pursued an intense artistic career as Kapellmeister at the court of Stuttgart (1753–68); in 1769 he took his leave in order to return to Italy and retire to Naples.
Without discussing his extensive operatic output (approximately 40 operas, of which 20 were for the court of Stuttgart and 5 for Vienna), we shall limit ourselves to mentioning his sacred compositions, which still remain unpublished in very numerous libraries throughout Europe. First of all, in addition to those already cited, there are the oratorios Isacco figura del Redentore, or the sacrifice of Abraham (1750), and Giuseppe viconosciuto, all on texts by Metastasio; four cantatas for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin and others; a Inno per la Sagra, an Inno per la festa dei ss. Pietro e Paolo, the psalm Confitebor (1750), the offertory Confirma hoc Deus, six antiphons for the Feast, the psalm Laudate pueri for four sopranos, soloists, and choruses (1752), the psalm In convertendo (1753), the Mognificat, the psalm Beatus vir, the Sequenza di Pasqua for six concertante voices, more than two Masses, and his last famous work, the Miserere for two sopranos with instruments (1773). The dramatic power that had given his compositions a particularly expressive tragic quality in the recitatives also vibrates in the works of religious inspiration, above all in the oratorios—for example, in the Passione, in which the Metastasian text, already set to music by various composers, takes on an entirely new effectiveness, an expressive declamation of the highest dramatic pathos.