Two Spanish brothers revisited: recent research surrounding the life and instrumental music of Juan Bautista Pla and José Pla
Matthew Haakenson is a PhD candidate and graduate assistant in music theory at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He is currently working on his dissertation entitled ‘Musical architectonics in the oboe concerti of Juan Baptista Pla and Giovanni Benedetto Platti: assuaging assumptions over an ambiguous attribution’ under the direction of Dr Kate Covington. mhaakenson{at}uky.edu
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Abstract |
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This article constructs a more complete and up-to-date picture of the lives and instrumental compositions of the oboist-composers Juan and José Pla than has hitherto been available. It traces their wanderings from Spain to royal courts and public performance venues throughout Europe—including Lisbon, Paris, London, Stuttgart, Padua and possibly the Netherlands. Such a broad itinerary suggests that the brothers' virtuoso abilities on the oboe (as well as their compositions) not only reached, but also influenced the ideas and works of contemporary and later composers perhaps more than had been suspected. There is a brief discussion of the only catalogue of the Plas' works, the paucity of pieces that have been analysed to date, and issues surrounding the manuscript sources of their known instrumental compositions. The concluding remarks provide several points of departure for further research on the Plas.
Key Words: Pla brothers • Concert Spirituels • baroque oboe • Virtuoso oboists • 18th-century music • galant style