Nicola Sala

Nicola Sala (7 April 1713 – 31 August 1801) was an Italian composer and music theorist. He was born in and died in Naples. He was chapel-master and professor at Naples, having devoted himself to the collection of the finest models of printed music.

Sala studied music in Naples at Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini from 1732 to 1740 under Nicola Fago and Leonardo Leo. Some of his pupils were Carlo Lenzi, Giuseppe Gherardeschi, Benedetto Neri, Étienne-Joseph Floquet, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Louis Julien Casels de Labarre, Ercole Paganini, Gaspare Spontini, and many others.

He probably wrote his first composition, the opera Vologeses, staged first in Rome, in 1737. In 1745 he was accepted as successor to Leo in the position of master of the royal chapel. In the sixties represented some of his works at the Teatro di San Carlo, including the drama Zenobia, composed by his pupil Ambrogio Minoja, was well received. In 1787 he became second master of the Pieta Turchini, where he stayed for 47 years as teacher and director of the conservatory.

He was one of the most important Neapolitan teachers, having taught many musical composers. He wrote several pedagogical treatises, including Regole del contrappunto pratico, published in Naples in 1794. He also wrote several operas, oratorios, masses and cantatas. His music was recently rediscovered by the Conservatory of Benevento, which has headed the institution and the local association Eufoniarché, producing his operas and oratorios each year with the help of palaeographers and Latin scholars of the University of Naples, Rome and Paris.

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