Composer
Born in Qormi, to mercantile parents financially able to give him private schooling as a boy. At the age of 16, Spiteri de Fremond began to study music under the direction of Mgr Giuseppe Burlon in Vittoriosa. In April 1822 he entered the Augustinian Order and was ordained priest by Bishop Mattei on 25 November 1827. Between 1828 and 1831 he also studied with the Italian composer Pasquale Sogner who at that time was in Malta as maestro al cembalo at the Teatro Manoel.
After his ordination, Spiteri de Fremond furthered his musical studies and in 1839 he went to Genoa and later visited a number of Italian cities including Rome. He travelled widely to France, England and the Middle East between 1839 and 1842 in search of wider musical perspectives. In Alexanda he composes a Miserere for Holy Week.
Spiteri de Fremond returned to Malta in 1842 and dedicated himself to the study and composition of music.
Giuseppe Spiteri Fremond composed about 150 works, made up of the 138 listed in the biographical catalogue, which are now preserved in the music archives of his Valletta convent, and various others probably composed in different locations and left behind, perhaps in donation, the Messa Grande in Rome, the Miserere in Alexandria, and the Tantum Ergo in Gozo.
Unfortunately his works are rarely executed nowadays but the occasional revival furnish concrete indications of a highly gifted composer, rich in imagination and technical competence.
On his return to Malta, he became a noted teacher and his students included Ferdinando Camilleri, Francesco Mallia Cassar, Anton Nani, Emanuele Bartoli, Nicola Verdinelli and Paolino Vassallo. He introduced treble voices in his compositions, reportedly the first to do so in Malta.
He was maestro di cappella of those churches administered by the Augustinian Order as well as of the Parish church of Qormi, the village of his birth between 1837 and 1872. He also provided liturgical music to several other parishes including those of Żurrieq, Żabbar, Vittoriosa and Senglea.
In 1873, Spiteri de Fremond was elected member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna for his merits as a composer.
In 1854, he wrote Sinfonia N. 3, which is one of the finest works and, like the sinfonia by Pietro Paolo Bugeja, was meant for church use. He composed over fifty musical scores. Besides sacred music, he composed a number of symphonies, romanze, cantatas and mazurkas.
Giuseppe de Fremond died in the morning of 12 January 1878, and after a memorable funeral in his convent’s church in Valletta during which, on the initiative of Paolo and Antonio Nani, practically all Maltese musicians and those then performing in the Royal Opera House executed his [Spiteri de Fremond’s] Messa da Requiem, he was buried in his Order’s Conventual Church in Rabat.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.