Giovanni Battista Sammartini

Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c. 1700 – 15 January 1775) was an Italian composer, oboist, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach. It has also been noted that many stylizations in Joseph Haydn's compositions are similar to those of Sammartini, although Haydn denied any such influence. Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while "the prevailing impression left by Sammartini's work... [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end".

He is often confused with his brother, Giuseppe, a composer with a similarly prolific output (and the same initials).

Giovanni Battista Sammartini was born to French emigrant and oboist Alexis Saint-Martin and Girolama de Federici in Milan, in what was Austria during most of his lifetime and Italy today. He was the seventh of eight children. He received musical instruction from his father and wrote his first work in 1725, which was a set of vocal works (now lost). Not long after, he acquired the positions of maestro di cappella at Sant'Ambrogio and to the Congregazione del Santissimo Entierro in 1728. He held the position at Sant'Ambrogio until his death.

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