Trifolium - J. P. Almeida Mota. String Quartets (2020)

João Pedro Almeida Mota (1744 - ca. 1817) or Juan Pedro Almeida Mota, as he used to autograph his works, is a merit composer whose music is still little known. An ignorance that may be due to his somewhat ambiguous national identity. Born and trained in Portugal, he developed almost all his career in Spain, being unattractive for a musicology until very recently still very conditioned by a markedly nationalistic perspective. To this misleading national affiliation, in the case of Almeida, a new source of uncertainties can still be added, partly conditioned by that same fact. Musical historiography has been particularly insidious with the identity of this composer, often confused with other musicians with the same last name or, directly, subject to fictitious identities created by nineteenth-century musical historiography that have persisted until very recent times.

Born in Lisbon, on June 24, 1744, his musical career began in various Portuguese ecclesiastical institutions. In 1771 he moved to Galicia and stayed in Spain until the end of his days where, for almost fifty years, he held various positions in musical institutions, both ecclesiastical and courteous. He first worked as a singer in the chapels of the cathedrals of Santiago de Compostela (1771) and Mondoñedo (1772). Shortly after, in 1775, he won the place of substitute chapel master of the Lugo Cathedral and, years later, on March 19, 1783, he took possession of the chapel master square of the Astorga Cathedral (1783), where he stayed for ten years.

On April 7, 1793 it was proposed for the place of Master of Rudiments of Music of the prestigious Royal College of Singing Children. The fact that he was invited and did not submit to a contest shows that the Astorga chapel master should have a very good reputation and contacts in the musical circles of the capital. The proposal, addressed to the king and signed in Aranjuez directly by Cardinal Patriarch Antonio de Sentmenat and de Cartellà, alms and chaplain of King Carlos IV, indicates that Almeida was “subject of proven skill, and intelligence, as he has credited in different works that he has presented in Madrid, for whose reasons and to be of an arranged behavior and of a very suitable character for the education of the Children, he considers him to be creditor to that grace ”. Just a few weeks later, on April 28 he took possession of his new position in Madrid, linked to the institution of the Royal Chapel, under the direction of Antonio Ugena (since 1778) and José Lidón (from 1805). As indicated in the document mentioned above, some of his works were already known in court settings, presumably religious compositions, but we cannot certify it. It was not until 1798 when he received financial compensation from the king for his diligence and the task of writing music for the Royal Chapel, a task very restricted to the chapel masters, a circumstance that explains the tense relations and the constant disputes he maintained with Ugena to cause of its accreditation to compose music for said institution.