Francesco Durante (March 15, 1684 - August 13, 1755) was an Italian composer.

He was innate at Frattamaggiore, in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and at an early age he entered a Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo, around Naples, where he received lessons from either Gaetano Greco. Late he became the pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio. He is likewise supposed to own exposed under Bernardo Pasquini and Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni in Rome, but no documental grounds to believe. He is said to use at times succeeded Scarlatti around 1725 at Sant' Onofrio, & to use remained there until 1742, once he succeeded Porpora as head of the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, also within Naples. This post he held for xiii years, till his dying around Naples. He was married 3 days.

His fame as a teacher was considerable, & Niccola Jommelli, Giovanni Paisiello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Niccola Piccinni and Leonardo da Vinci were amongst his pupils. when a teacher, he insisted on the blind observance of system, differing so from either Scarlatti, world health organization treated totally his pupils as people. The complete collection of Durante's works, consisting well-nigh solely of sacred music, was presented by Selvaggi, the Neapolitan art collector, to the Paris library. The catalogue can be detected around Fétis's Biographie universelle. A majestic library of Vienna also preserves a worthful collection of Durante's manuscripts. Both requiems, many people (one of which, a virtually all original function, is the Pastoral Mass for tetrad voices) & the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah come amongst his first settings.

A fact that Durante never composed for the stage brought him an exaggerated reputation as a composer of sacred music. Although one of a better church composers of his style & time period, he is nowadays considered inferior to two Leonardo Leo and Alessandro Scarlatti, and seems to stand founded a sentimental school of Italian religious music. This nature and severity of music is characteristic of Durante as a human; intellectually artless, however sincerely devout. Hasse protested against Durante's being described when the greatest harmonist of Italy, a title which he ascribed to Alessandro Scarlatti.

This entry was originally from either a 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.