Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Benda, George

Benda, George, brother of the preceding, a native of Altbenadky, in Bohemia, was born in 1722. He was many years in the service of the court of Gotha, and published, in 1757, a very beautiful set of sonatas for the harpsichord, in the style of Emmanuel Bach. He also composed several German comic operas, and two works, which he calls duoclramas, "Ariadne in Naxos," and "Medea." The author has manifested great abilities and feeling in the expressive and picturesque symphonic composition with which he has told the story and painted the distress of Ariadne, when abandoned by Theseus in the Island of Naxos. This is done wholly with-out singing. The narrative part is spoken in blank verse, and the several passions and sentiments are seconded and highly colored in fragments of symphony, like those of accompanied recitative of the most select, impassioned, and exquisite kind. G. Benda was received, in 1742, as first violin at the chapel of the King of Prussia, and subsequently was chapel-master at Gotha. About the year 1760, he obtained permission to visit Italy, and it was after his return that he composed his best vocal music. Dr. Burney says, that the music of G. Benda is new, pro-found, and worthy of a great master ; the only objection that can be made to it is an occasional affectation of too great novelty ; but this observation can only apply to his earlier productions, before he went to Italy. In 1778 he settled at Hamburg, and afterwards went to Vienna, and then returned to Gotha, where he was rewarded for his musical talents with a pension, and where he died in 1795, aged seventy-four. He was the most absent man imaginable. It has been said that, on the very verge of death, Benda rose from his bed to finish a tune which a wayward boy, who had run away, had left unfinished. He completed the musical phrase, and instantly died.