Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer

The count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (born the November 2nd 1692, with Delden, United Provinces - died the November 9th 1766 with $the Hague) is a diplomat and Compositeur Dutch.

Its most important compositions which arrived to us are “Concerti Armonici”, which until recently was wrongfully allotted to the Italian type-setter Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736).

Biography

Unico Willem Van Wassenaer was born constant in a rich family is powerful. He studied right to Leyde and in 1723 married Dodnea Lucia van Goslinga, which gave him three children. Van Wassenaer occupied of the loads diplomatic, military and commercial high: its reputation as musician was not lower than that as diplomat.

Between 1725 and 1740 it wrote “Concerti Armonici”, but because of its title it did not want to publish them under its own name. The concerts were published 1740 by the Italian violonist Carlo Ricciotti (1681 - 1756), to which them concerts was allotted initially. Van Wassenaer was thus called “the type-setter of mystery”.

The Polish type-setter François Lessel (1780? - 1835) affirmed incorrectly that the concerts had been written by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. The model in the concerts Italian, is written in the style Roman typical with four shares for the violin and consistent in four shares instead of the three Venetian ones; they are comparable with work of Pietro Locatelli.

In 1979 a manuscript of the six “concerti” was found in the files of the castle of Twickel (the castle where Van Wassenaer was born), marked “Concerti Armonici”. Although the writing is not that of Wassenaer, the manuscript carries an introduction of the type-setter, saying: “Partition in my concerts engrave by Sr. Ricciotti” Following research of the Dutch musicologist Albert Dunning, it has there no more no doubt that the “concerti” were actually written by Wassenaer.

In addition to the “concerti”, three Sonata S for Recorder and continuo were discovered with beginning of the year 90.

Source

Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692-1766). With master unmasked, but the Pergolesi-Ricciotti puzzle solved. By Albert Dunning. Tr. by Joan Rimmer. Fried Knuf, 1980.

External bonds

Unico Willem van Wassenaer: the mystery to compose

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