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Scan 48
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
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1enthusiastic and hopeful disposition, Paisible's youthful ambition led him to throw up these posts and travel. After visiting the principal French towns, he rambled through the Netherlands and Germany as far as St. Petersburg, where his previous triumphant successes led him to hope for an appearance before the Empress Catherine. Owing, however, to the intrigues of Antonio Lolli, who was then attached to the Imperial court, his endeavours to be heard were frustrated. Two public concerts which he gave failed to attract attention. Much disheartened he entered the service of a Russian Count, with whom he travelled to Moscow. This resource lasted but for a short time. He gave further concerts, but with discouraging results, and at length, distracted by misfortune and crippled with debts, he shot himself at St. Petersburg. His touching farewell letter left instructions that his valuable violin should be sold towards defraying his debts. Published compositions:
3Two violin concertos, op. 1, Paris; six string quartets, op. 2, London; six ditto, op. 3, Paris.
5E. H.-A.
7PAISIBLE (PEASABLE), JAMES (d. London, 1721), resident in London in the latter part of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, was a member of the King's Band of Music. He composed overtures and act tunes for the following pieces—'King Edward the Third,' 1691; 'Oroonoko' and 'The Spanish Wives,' 1696; 'The Humours of Sir John Falstaff,' Henry IV., Part i., 1700; 'She would and she would not,' 1703; and 'Love's Stratagem.' Some of these were 'performed before Her Majesty and the new King of Spain.' He also wrote Duets for flutes, published in 'Thesaurus musicus,' 1693–1696; and Sonatas and other pieces for flutes published at Amsterdam. (See Q.-L.) He assisted St. Evremond in composing music for the Duchess of Mazarine's concerts at Chelsea.
9Various information, including Paisible's will, has been collected by W. J. Lawrence and published in Mus. Ant. ii. 57 and 241; iii. 117, iv. 191.
11W. H. H.
13PAISIELLO (PAESIELLO), GIOVANNI (b. Taranto, May 9, 1741; d. Naples, June 5, 1816), eminent composer of the Italian school was the son of a veterinary surgeon at Taranto. At 5 years old he entered the Jesuit school at Taranto, where he attracted notice by the beauty of his voice. The elements of music were taught him by one Carlo Presta, a priest and tenor singer, and he showed such talent that his father, who had intended to educate him for the legal profession, abandoned this idea, and succeeded in obtaining admission for him in 1754 to San Onofrio, at Naples, where he received instruction from the veteran Durante, and afterwards from Cotumacci and Abos.
15During his nine years of studentship, Paisiello's powers were exercised on church music, but in 1765 he indulged in the composition of a dramatic intermezzo, which, performed at the little theatre of the Conservatorio, revealed where his real talent lay. The piece pleased so much that its composer was summoned to Bologna to write two comic operas, 'La Pupilla' and 'Il mondo a Rovescio'; which inaugurated a long series of successes in all the chief Italian towns. At Naples, where Paisiello finally took up his abode, he found a formidable rival in Piccinni, and later, when Piccinni had departed to Paris, in Cimarosa. The enthusiastic reception met with by his own operas, and by 'L'idolo cinese' (1767) in particular, was insufficient to set him at ease while his own supremacy was at all in danger. He seems all his life to have regarded every possible rival with jealous dislike, and on more than one occasion to have stooped to intrigue, not only to ensure his own success, but to defeat that of others.
17In 1776, on the invitation of the Empress Catherine, who offered him a splendid salary, Paisiello left Naples for St. Petersburg. Among a number of operas written there must be mentioned 'Il barbiere di Siviglia' (c. 1780), one of his best works, and to which a special interest attaches from its effect on the first representation of Rossini's opera of the same name. Coldly received when performed at Rome (after Paisiello's return from Russia), it ended by obtaining so firm a hold on the affections of the Roman public that the attempt of another composer to write a new 'Barber' was regarded as sacrilege, nor would this audience at first give even a hearing to the famous work which finally consigned its predecessor to oblivion.
19After eight years in St. Petersburg, Paisiello returned to Italy, stopping at Vienna on his way back, where he wrote twelve 'symphonies' for Joseph II., and an opera 'Il re Teodoro,' (1784) containing some of his best music. 'Il Marchese di Tulipano,' written for Rome, was played in London, Jan. 21, 1786 (under Cherubini, who added six airs of his own) and enjoyed for years a European popularity. He was named, about 1784, maestro di cappella to Ferdinand IV. of Naples, and during the next thirteen years produced several of the works by which he became most widely known, notably 'I zingari in fiera' (1789), 'Nina, o la Pazza d'Amore' (1789), and 'La molinara.' In 1797, on the death of General Hoche, Paisiello wrote a Funeral March, to order, for Napoleon, then General Buonaparte, who always showed a marked predilection for this composer's music, and now gave preference to his work over one by Cherubini.
21When, in 1799, the Republican government was declared at Naples, Paisiello accommodated himself to the new state of things, and was rewarded by the post of 'Director of the National Music.' At the Restoration he naturally found
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