Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Abstract:
In 1716, Antonio Caldara had achieved his long-awaited goal: the composer had been accepted as Vice-Kapellmeister at the Viennese court. The earliest datable composition he presented at his new post was a cantata, a vocal work with a small cast. This secular composition, entitled Da te che pasci ogn’ora, dates from July 22nd of the aforementioned year and marks the cornerstone of Caldara’s rich and distinguished activity at the imperial court, which was to span two decades until his death in 1736. Remarkably, however, a not insignificant number of his works for the imperial court were not created in the Habsburg capital, but far from Vienna in Italy. One place attracted him again and again: Casalmaggiore in Lombardy. About a quarter of his cantata compositions for the Viennese court were written there. One stands out in particular: the cantata for three voices and string accompaniment Alla tromba immortale, written on the occasion of Empress Elisabeth Christine’s birth-day. The text, written by Camillo Mantovani and set to music by Caldara in 1732, combines Casalmaggiore on the Po with Caldara’s biography, the empress and a political problem of the House of Habsburg that is as delicate as it is urgent – the question of succession. The article explores the question of how Caldara’s relations with Casalmaggiore were shaped and which works he composed there for the im-perial court. Alla tromba immortale is then analyzed as a case study, both textually and musically, in order to extrapolate some aspects of “Austrian Italianità”.