Nicola Sala

Biography

Nicola Sala (7 April 1713 – 31 August 1801) was an Italian composer and music theorist. He was born in Tocco Caudio and died in Naples. He was chapel-master and professor at Naples, having devoted himself to the collection of the finest models of printed music.

Biography

Sala studied music in Naples at Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini from 1732 to 1740 under Nicola Fago and Leonardo Leo. Some of his pupils were Carlo Lenzi, Giuseppe Gherardeschi, Benedetto Neri, Étienne-Joseph Floquet, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Louis Julien Casels de Labarre, Ercole Paganini, Gaspare Spontini, and many others.
He probably wrote his first composition, the opera Vologeso, staged first in Rome, in 1737. In 1745 he was accepted as successor to Leo in the position of master of the royal chapel. In the sixties represented some of his works at the Teatro di San Carlo, including the drama Zenobia, composed by his pupil Ambrogio Minoja, was well received. In 1787 he became second master of the Pieta Turchini, where he stayed for 47 years as teacher and director of the conservatory.
He was one of the most important Neapolitan teachers, having taught many musical composers. He wrote several pedagogical treatises, including Regole del contrappunto pratico, published in Naples in 1794. He also wrote several operas, oratorios, masses and cantatas. His music was recently rediscovered by the Conservatory of Benevento, which has headed the institution and the local association Eufoniarché, producing his operas and oratorios each year with the help of palaeographers and Latin scholars of the University of Naples, Rome and Paris.
The well-regarded state-funded music conservatory Conservatorio Statale di Musica Nicola Sala in Benevento near Naples is named for him.

Operas

Vologeso (opera seria, libretto by Apostolo Zeno, 1737, Rome)
La Zenobia (opera seria, libretto by Pietro Metastasio, 1761, Naples)
Demetrio (opera seria, libretto by Pietro Metastasio, 1762, Naples)
Merope (opera seria, libretto by Apostolo Zeno, 1769, Naples)

Other musical works

Giove, Pallade, Apollo (cantata, 1763, Naples)
Il giudizio d'Apollo (serenade, libretto by Giovanni Fenizia, 1768, Naples)
Erto, Ebone, Arminio (cantata, 1769, Naples)
La bella eroina (prologue, 1769, Naples)
Varie aria
Judith seu Bethuliae liberatio-Giuditta ossia La Betulia liberata (oratorio, libretto by anonymous author, 2007, Benevento)

Theoretical works

Regole del contrappunto pratico (1794, Naples)
Principi di contrappunto
Elementi per ben suonare il cembalo
Disposizione a tre per introduzione alle fughe di tre parti
Il modo di disporre a tre sopra la scala diatonica
Disposizioni imitate a soggetto e contrasoggetto
Fughe con soggetto e contrasoggetto a suono plagale