Marianna Martines (1744 – 1812)
Marianna Martines was born in Vienna. Her mother was German, but her father’s side of the family was from Spain by way of Naples. Sometimes her last name is spelled “Martinez.”
As was common in Vienna, disparate groups of people often lived in the same building, with the more affluent families on the lower floors and the poorer families on the upper floors. The Martines family had apartments on the 3rd floor of the Michaelerhaus, which also housed Pietro Trapassi (better known as the prolific librettist Metastasio), the opera composer Nicola Porpora, and at one time, Porpora’s assistant and student, the young Joseph Haydn.
Marianna learned singing from Porpora, the keyboard from Haydn, and composition from other teachers. A Mass that she composed was publicly performed when she was 16. She was befriended by Mozart, and the two of them played together at the harpsichord.
Marianna Martines never married and was able to devote her life to performing and composing music. Her best-known works are an Overture in C Major (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a symphonia or symphony) composed in 1770, incidently, the year that Beethoven was born:
This Dixit dominus from 1774 is based on the text of Psalm 109 from the Latin Vulgate, numbered as Psalm 110 in other translations, which begins “The Lord declared”: