Sabinus

Francois-Joseph Gossek - Sabinus Suite, Les Agremens, Gui Van Waas (conductor) 1.Tambourin - 0:00 2.Air des veillards - 1:53 3. Air en passacaille - 4:30 4. Gigue pour les enfants - 8:28 François-Joseph Gossec (17 January 1734 – 16 February 1829) was a French composer of operas, string quartets, symphonies, and choral works. The son of a small farmer, Gossec was born at the village of Vergnies, then a French exclave in the Austrian Netherlands, now in Belgium. Showing an early taste for music, he became a choir-boy in Antwerp. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken on by the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. He followed Rameau as the conductor of a private orchestra kept by the fermier général Le Riche de La Poupelinière, a wealthy amateur and patron of music. Gradually he became determined to do something to revive the study of instrumental music in France. Gossec founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1769 and in 1773 he reorganised the Concert Spirituel. In this concert series he conducted his own symphonies as well as those by his contemporaries, particularly works by Joseph Haydn, whose music had become increasingly popular in Paris, finally even superseding Gossec's symphonic work. In the 1780s Gossec's symphonic output decreased as he began concentrating on operas. He organized the École de Chant in 1784, together with Etienne Méhul, was conductor of the band of the Garde Nationale of the French Revolution, and was appointed (with Méhul and Luigi Cherubini) inspector of the Conservatoire de Musique at its creation in 1795. He was an original member of the Institut and a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was little known outside France, and his own numerous compositions, sacred and secular, were overshadowed by those of more famous composers; but he was an inspiration to many, and powerfully stimulated the revival of instrumental music. Sabinus, a tragedie-lyrique, comes from the period of Gossec's life when he turned increasingly to the stage, an area where he failed to find the sort of success he enjoyed as a purely instrumental composer. But the suite drawn from the opera shows that Gossec was every bit as imaginative in following Rameau's lead as he was in following Stamitz's. The music of Sabinus is sprightly and colorful, with a Tambourin featuring a tambourine as well as the eponymous little drum, along with imitations of the piffero. The final Chaconne includes a Spanish dance episode complete with a pair of castanets.