Paradis MT Sheet Music and Biography
Maria Theresia von Paradis (also spelt Paradies) was born in Vienna on 15 May 1759. She became blind from around the age of three.
She wrote a number of solo piano works, keyboard music and vocal pieces along with cantatas and operas. However, she is very much forgotten about today.
We have a selection of von Paradis sheet music arrangements of ‘Siciliano‘ arranged for different instruments on music-scores.com.
Career
Von Paradis’ father was the Imperial Secretary and her mother accompanied her daughter on tour.
When von Paradis was twenty-four she went on tour to Germany, Switzerland, arriving in Paris in 1784. Whist on tour they visited the Mozarts. During her time in Paris, she met with Marie Antoinette, performing fourteen concerts. She also met with Valentin Haüy who she inspired and helped set up the first school for the blind in 1785. That same year she arrived in London. Whilst in London von Paradis performed for the Prince of Wales and accompanied him on the cello, along with playing for George III. Her popularity proved less than that of Paris and she left London to tour Western Europe. She met with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg. After touring Berlin and Prague she returned to Vienna in 1786.
Von Paradis used a composition board invented by her partner and librettist Johann Riedinger.
Siciliano
Siciliano is widely performed by cellists and was in fact played at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle in 2018 by Sheku Kanneh-Mason. However, there is some doubt as to whether Siciliano is correctly attributed to von Paradis.
This is not the only question mark over Maria Theresia von Paradis’ work and consequently, it is not known how many pieces she actually wrote as others have been attributed to Pietro Domenico Paradies and other composers.
The clip below is Sheku Kanneh-Mason playing Siciliano at the Royal Wedding. The first three minutes twenty seconds is Siciliano.
Paradis MT Sheet Music Downloads and Further Reading
On music-scores.com we have a selection of arrangements of von Paradis sheet music in PDF format for you to download.
Read more about this composer at Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, Wikipedia and Allmusic.
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