Sabater, José Maria

José Maria Sabater (?1787-1875) was a bass singer in the Patriarchal Church, teacher and music copyist. In 1807, he was granted a licence to sing in the ‘Bandstand’ (‘ao Coreto’) without salary (Fernandes 2009, p. 226). He was an ‘intimate friend’ of José Luiz de Souza Coutinho, the 15th Count of Redondo, whose daughter and son he taught (Vieira 1900, ii, p. 242). The writer, librarian and public servant, Tomás Lino de Assunção (1844-1902) was also his disciple (Vieira 1900, ii, p. 242). 

Sabater often signs his copies with the monogram JMS. Some of them in the Fundo do Conde de Redondo in P-Ln are also numbered: F.C.R. 331 (‘N 1’); F.C.R. 332 (‘N 2’); F.C.R. 333 (‘N 3’); F.C.R. 168//37 and F.C.R. 168//38 (‘28’). He collaborated with the Conde de Redondo in the copying of performance parts for sacred works by Manuel Gaspar (P-Ln, F.C.R. 19//1 and F.C.R. 19//2) and Marcos Portugal (P-Ln, F.C.R. 168//37); the latter is dated 1838.

Cristina Fernandes, ‘O sistema produtivo da Música Sacra em Portugal no final do Antigo Regime: a Capela Real e a Patriarcal entre 1750 e 1807’, PhD thesis (Universidade de Évora, 2009), Appendix.

António Jorge Marques, A obra religiosa de Marcos António Portugal (1762-1830): catálogo temático, crítica de fontes e de texto, proposta de cronologia (Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, 2012), p. 847.

Ernesto Vieira, Diccionário Biographico de musicos portuguezes: história e bilbiographia da musica em Portugal, 2 vols. (Lisbon, Typographia Mattos Moreira & Pinheiro, 1900), ii, pp. 242, 267-268.