Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Udine, Girolamo da.

See Dalla Casa, Girolamo.

Uffenbach, Johann Friedrich Armand von

(b Frankfurt, 6 May 1687; d Frankfurt, 10 April 1769). German amateur musician. He was a member of an old Frankfurt family of prosperous tradespeople. As a student he travelled in the company of his elder brother Zacharias Conrad to Lübeck and then from Hamburg to England where they recorded their impressions of musical performances. Johann Friedrich, the more musical of the two, spent two further years studying in Strasbourg and after graduating in law in 1714 travelled through Switzerland to Italy to gain experience of operatic and concert life there. In Venice, at the S Angelo theatre, he witnessed a performance of L.A. Predieri’s Lucio Papirio during which Vivaldi, who was acting as musical director and leader of the orchestra, played an astonishing cadenza where he ascended so high that, his fingers came, in Uffenbach’s words, ‘within a straw’s breadth of the bridge’. Later in 1715 he went to Paris to receive instruction in lute playing from Gallot; he returned two years later to settle in Frankfurt, where he keenly supported the Frauenstein musical society concerts then directed by Telemann.

Uffenbach was a man of wide interests and many accomplishments. He formed a private learned society in Frankfurt (resembling Mizler’s in Leipzig), and rose to an eminent position in the administration of the city. In Dichtung und Wahrheit Goethe referred to his work in organizing concerts and oratorios there and to his fine collection of music. Uffenbach was a benefactor of the new University of Göttingen, to whose library he left, among other things, the journals of his extensive travels in Europe. These constitute an important body of historical source material, as do his letters to musicians such as Telemann, Hotteterre, Graupner, Mattheson and Graun.

In England in 1709–10 the Uffenbachs heard Nicolini and Pepusch with admiration and noted the excellence of the London orchestras, consisting largely of foreigners. They found the English not very talented musically except as organists, a view confirmed for them on a visit to Cambridge where they heard the organ played in Trinity College chapel and attended a meeting of the music club at Christ’s College where the ingenia, apparently, were not in the least musica. Uffenbach’s interest in opera extended to writing two librettos: L’arti communi: quo vanno per la città, a dramma per musica which was printed, and Pharasmanes, a Singspiel dated 1720 which remained unpublished until 1930.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (W. Boetticher)

J.G. Schelhorn, ed.: Herrn Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach merkwürdige Reise (Ulm and Memmingen, 1753–4; Eng. trans., 1928)

J.E.B. Mayor, ed.: Cambridge under Queen Anne (Cambridge, 1911)

W. Nagel: ‘Deutsche Musiker des 18. Jahrhunderts im Verkehr mit J.F.A. von Uffenbach’, SIMG, xiii (1911–12), 69–106

M. Arnim, ed.: J.F. Armand von Uffenbachs Tagbuch einer Spazierfarth durch die Hessische in die Braunschweig-Lüneburgischen Lande (Göttingen, 1928)

M. Arnim, ed.: Johann Fredrich v. Uffenbachs Reise durch die Pfalz (Mannheim, 1928)

E. Preussner, ed.: Die musikalischen Reisen des Herrn von Uffenbach (Kassel, 1949)

MICHAEL TILMOUTH

Uffererii, Giovanni Damasceni [Ufferer, Johann Damascenus; Aufreri, Offererius]

(b ?Pesaro, fl early 17th century). Italian composer. Eitner's bibliographies distinguished between German and Italian composers with similar names, and subsequent scholarship has tended to focus on his putative German composer ‘Ufferer’. However, Beer has provided compelling evidence that the surviving compositions probably all come from a single Italian composer from Pesaro. The lost publication of sacred concertos may have acted as the source for his surviving motets, 16 of which were published in a number of German anthologies between 1613 and 1638, notably those compiled by Johann Donfrid. The works are fine examples of the early concertato motet, embracing a wide range of vocal idioms familiar from the motets of more celebrated north Italian composers of the period. Distinctive touches include the incorporation of the plainsong intonation for ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ in Hodie nobis coelorum rex, and the bold harmonic progressions found amidst the otherwise more conservative style of O quam suavis est Domine.

WORKS

all motets with basso continuo

Collection of sacred concs., 1–6vv (Venice, 1609), lost, cited by various, incl. Walther; Anima mea liquefacta est, 3vv, 1616^2; Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei, 6vv, 1613^2; Confitemini Domino, 2vv, 1623^2; Factum est silentium, 4vv, 1627^1; Filiae Jerusalem venite, 2vv, 1623^2; Haec dies, 3vv, 1623^2; Hi sunt quos aliquando, 4vv, 1616^2; Hodie nobis coelorum rex, 4vv, 1622^2; Jesu dulcis memoria, 5vv, 1646^2 (inc.); Jubilemus in arca Domini, 2vv, D-Dlb (inc.); Magnus Dominus noster, 4vv, 1623^2; O quam suavis est Domine, 4vv, 1623^2; Pastores [Mariae] loquebantur, 2vv, 1622^2; Repleatur os meum, 2vv, 1616^2; Repleatur os meum, 1v, 1638^5; Tota pulchra es, 3vv, 1627^2; Voce mea ad Dominum, 2vv, 1622^2; Vulnerasti cor meum, 3vv, 1627^2

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

WaltherML

H.J. Moser: Die mehrstimmige Vertonung des Evangeliums, i (Leipzig, 1931/R), 39, 50

W. Steude: Die Musiksammelhandschriften des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek zu Dresden (Wilhelmshaven, 1974), 16, 158, 188–91

A. Beer: Die Annahme des “stile nuovo” in der katholischen Kirchenmusik Süddeutschlands (Tutzing, 1989), 237–9

GEOFFREY WEBBER