(b Bergedorf, bap. 25 March 1699; d Venice, 16 Dec 1783). German composer. From a family of musicians, he began his career as a tenor in Hamburg; he then studied in Italy, under A. Scarlatti and others, and wrote several works for performance in Naples, where he held a position. With his wife, the soprano Faustina Bordoni, he went to Dresden in 1731 as Kapellmeister to the Saxon court. His reputation, however, was such that he was in demand in Italy (especially Venice, where he worked particularly for the Incurabili hospital) and Vienna as well as in Dresden. Besides his operas, he composed oratorios and large quantities of church music, chiefly for the Dresden court; he also wrote concertos and chamber works.

It was as an opera composer, however, that Hasse was above all esteemed. He wrote c70 stage works, mostly serious operas to texts by Metastasio, many of which were widely given, not only in Dresden but in Naples, in Venice during his later years at the important Viennese court, and wherever Italian opera was admired. Metastasio himself favoured Hasse above all others who set his librettos, for his polished style, his feeling for the words and his sensitivity to the human voice. Burney called him ‘the most natural, elegant, and judicious composer of vocal music, as well as the most voluminous’. In his last years, when he preferred to compose church music, he came to be regarded as old-fashioned.

• Artaserse (1730)
• Cleofide (1731)
• Siroe rè di Persia (1733)
• Tito Vespasiano (1735)
• Didone abbandonata (1742)
• Piramo e Tisbe (1768)
• Il Ruggiero (1771)
• c45 others
• 11 intermezzos
• 10 other stage works

• 11 oratorios, incl. I pellegrini al sepolcro di Nostro Signore (1745 or 1751), La conversione di S Agostino (1750)
• over 80 secular cantatas
• songs, arias, solfeggi
• Mass, d (1751)
• 11 other masses
• 3 Requiems
• c40 mass movts
• over 80 psalms, antiphons, hymns
• c40 solo motets
• sacred arias

• c25 fl concs.
• c30 trio sonatas
• over 30 fl sonatas and vn sonatas
• kbd sonatas, toccatas

The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.