Henri-Guillaume Hamal

Henri-Guillaume Hamal (also Hamalle or Amael; 1685, Liège, nowadays in Belgium3 December 1752 (aged 67), Liège) was a Walloon (i.e. a French-speaking native of the Low Countries) musician, musical director and composer. He is the first of the Hamal family of musicians, who were pre-eminent in 18th Century Liège, of whom we have knowledge. He spent his whole life in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire. The Prince-Bishop was a man of consequence: he was a member of the Imperial Diet. The principality was a strategically-important frontier state. When Hamal was born, it was part of the Spanish Netherlands. Between 1688 and 1704, it was much fought over between the French and the Dutch-British allies (themselves allies of the Empire, as part of the Grand Alliance). In 1714, at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, it became part of the Austrian Netherlands; but the Dutch troops left only in 1718. Hamal received his early musical education from (1613-1696), maître de chapelle at Saint Lambert’s Cathedral, Liège. He was known as an excellent singer, graceful, tasteful, and expressive. In 1708 or 1709, he married Catherine Corbusi