Mateo Pérez de Albéniz

Mateo Antonio Pérez de Albéniz was a composer and theorist born around 1755 in the Basque Country who died in San Sebastián on 23 June 1831. He belongs to the sacred music of northern Spain at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, where he held posts as maestro de capilla of considerable local importance.

He was maestro de capilla in San Sebastián and, during the French invasion, moved to the collegiate church of Logroño in 1795. Five years later he returned to San Sebastián to direct the chapel of Santa María la Redonda, a post he held until 1829.

His sacred output, abundant and highly successful during his lifetime in much of northern Spain, includes masses, vespers, the Oficio de Difuntos, motets and villancicos, many of which survive in manuscript. He wrote a certain amount of music for piano, the most notable being a sonata edited by Joaquín Nin in 1925, and he produced a treatise of 133 pages, published in San Sebastián in 1802, in which he draws on Antonio Soler to explain Renaissance notation.

Far from looking backwards, he admired Haydn and Mozart, and he was the first in Spain to publish extensive excerpts from both so that his pupils could imitate them.