João Rodrigues Esteves

João Rodrigues Esteves was a Portuguese composer, born around 1700 and dying in Lisbon after 1751. He is of interest for the role he played in sacred music in Lisbon during the first half of the eighteenth century, between the Roman tradition he learned at first hand and the musical life of the Portuguese capital.

Thanks to a pension from King John V, he studied in Rome with Ottavio Pitoni from about 1719 to 1726. On his return he was appointed maestro di cappella of the basilica of Santa Maria in Lisbon, around 1729, and he also taught at the Patriarchal Seminary. His surviving works, dated between 1719 and 1751, include twenty-two vespers psalms and a manuscript treatise, Regras de acompanhar.

Of roughly one hundred manuscript works preserved in Portugal, ninety-one are held in the archive of Lisbon Cathedral. Among them stands a mass for eight voices, completed in Rome in September 1721, which is considered the equal of any of Pitoni's masses published up to that time. His Miserere for twelve voices of 1737 is regarded as a masterpiece.

Stylistically, his early works are closely related to those of his Lisbon contemporary Giovanni Giorgio, in their preference for the stile antico.