Born in Bologna, Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692-1753), after some success with the Venetian opera and in other Northern Italian towns, arrived at the Saxon and Polish court in Dresden in 1715. He wrote Italian operas and intermezzos there, and also, from the 1720s, along with Heinichen and Zelenka, he was responsible for the music of the religious services at the Catholic court. His official appointment as church composer followed in 1746 – after the death of Zelenka. Four years later Ristori received his appointment as vicekapellmeister.

Ristori’s Divoti Affetti alla Passione di Nostro Signore were expressly for the use in the Royal Chapel of Dresden on the Fridays and Sundays of the Quadragesima. They belonged, therefore, to the afternoon prayers, which, since 1730, had taken place during Lent every day from Monday to Friday in the court church. The compositional models are chamber duets for voice and basso continuo with secular Italian texts that were widespread at the end of the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth century. His Esercizi per l’Accompagnamento were definitely written for teaching generalbass. They contain more than forty little pieces for one or two voices with figured bass, which serve the pupil not only as an exercise for performing basso continuo correctly, but they could also serve as the basis for improvisation.

With its demanding instructions for the generalbass and for improvisation just as in the Divoti Affetti, Ristori appears as a composer, who deserves no less consideration than his colleagues who were better known in his time and in ours.

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ACC 24246 Divertimenti op. 16 vol 2