Juan Bautista Cabanilles

Born in Algemesi near Valencia on 6 September 1644, died in Valencia on 29 April 1712; Juan Bautista Cabanilles was an organist, composer and priest of the Baroque. In 1665 he became assistant organist, from 1666 he served as first organist at Valencia Cathedral, a post he held for decades; in 1668 he was ordained priest. His extensive organ oeuvre comprises above all tientos, alongside tocatas, versos, pasacalles and gallardas. He also wrote sacred vocal works and polychoral compositions. The greater part of his manuscripts is held in the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona; an edition of his works in four volumes appeared in Barcelona in 1927–1952, edited by H. Anglès. He was appointed assistant organist of the cathedral on 15 May 1665; in 1666, after the death of his predecessor, he moved up to the post of first organist, which he held for some forty-five years; from 1703 he had himself deputised for on grounds of illness. He received priestly ordination on 22 September 1668, and from 1675 to 1677 he also directed the cathedral’s choirboys. His teachers included Urban de Vargas, Antonio Ortells and Jeronimo de la Torre, his pupils José Elias and Joaquin Martinez de Oxinaga. Alongside the organ works, a mass for six voices, a villancico for fifteen voices in five choirs with basso continuo and settings of psalms and of the Magnificat for twelve voices have survived; the holdings of the Biblioteca de Catalunya comprise more than five hundred compositions, and José Climent published five further volumes from 1986 to 2008. Four albums in the Cybele catalogue are devoted entirely to his organ music. On the great Rieger organ of Marienstatt Abbey, Sandro R. Müller shaped a cycle of four books and placed one of the symbolic figures of the four Evangelists at the head of each: La Sagrada Familia gathers nine tientos, and Bodas de Sangre, Galeria and Engelskonzert follow, the last bringing together the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, a Corpus Christi mass and the visions of angels in the Bible.