Neapolitan musical civilisation perhaps owes more to Leonardo Leo (b. San Vito dei
Normanni in the province of Brindisi 5 August
1694, d. Naples 31 October 1744) than to others such as Porpora,
who was completely taken up with his work as a composer and singing master in London,
Dresden and Venice, or Durante, the only one to have excluded
the theatre from his vocation, by which he was chiefly a teacher and composer of
instrumental and church music.
Leo had closed links with the conservatories (teaching
at S. Maria della Pietà dei Turchini and at S. Onofrio) and the royal chapel, and he
played a decisive part in the training of the next generation of composers, among whose
ranks Jommelli and Piccinni were prominent, and
distinguished himself as a composer of religious music of the highest quality, imbued with
nostalgia for the practice of "observed" (strict, as we should say nowadays)
counterpoint in the renaissance mould.
His most celebrated work is the “Miserere”.
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