Biography
Antonio Bertali, born in Verona in 1605, spent his professional life as a violinist and composer in Vienna throughout the central decades of the seventeenth century. A portrait executed in 1664 supplied the only clue to his exact age, its inscription stating that he was then fifty-nine years and seven months old; consequently almost nothing is recorded about his childhood. His earliest documented training came from Stefano Bernardi, then serving as Kapellmeister at Verona Cathedral. By the mid-1620s Bertali had relocated to the Habsburg capital and entered the service of the imperial court, an association that would last for the remainder of his career. In 1631 he was entrusted with the music for the wedding of Emperor Ferdinand III, after which he regularly supplied compositions for state ceremonies. Among the surviving scores from these years are the 1631 cantata Donna real, the Missa Ratisbonensis of 1636, and the Requiem pro Ferdinando II composed in 1637. Already counted among Vienna’s foremost violinists, Bertali gradually earned comparable esteem as a composer over the following fifteen years. His output during this period encompassed sacred pieces, operas, oratorios, and assorted vocal and instrumental chamber works. The appointment to Kapellmeister in 1649 placed him in one of the city’s most prestigious musical posts and conferred substantial authority over local performance and patronage. He exercised that authority to enlarge the court’s operatic activity, thereby increasing employment for numerous Viennese musicians and composers. Bertali’s idiom remained rooted in the practices of northern Italy; Christoph Bernhard’s 1657 treatise on the “luxuriant” style accordingly placed him beside Monteverdi and Cavalli. He retained the Kapellmeistership until his death in Vienna in 1669. Although the greater part of his production is lost, more than two thousand works are known to have existed.