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BOCCHERINI, LUIGI (1743-1805)

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Originally appearing in Volume V04, Page 106 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BOCCHERINI, See also:LUIGI (1743-1805) , See also:Italian composer, son of an Italian See also:bass-player, was See also:born at See also:Lucca, and studied at See also:Rome, where he became a See also:fine 'cellist, and soon began to compose. He returned to Lucca, where for some years he was prominent as a player, and there he produced two oratorios and an See also:opera. He toured in See also:Europe, and in 1768 was received in See also:Paris by See also:Gossec and his circle with See also:great See also:enthusiasm, his instrumental pieces being highly applauded; and from 1769 to 1785 he held the See also:post of " composer and virtuoso " to the See also:king of See also:Spain's See also:brother, the See also:infante Luis, at See also:Madrid. He afterwards became " chamber-composer " to King See also:Frederick See also:William II. of See also:Prussia, till 1797, when he returned to Spain. He died at Madrid on the 28th of May 1805. As an admirer of See also:Haydn, and a voluminous writer of instrumental See also:music, chiefly for the See also:violoncello, Boccherini represents the effect of the rapid progress of a new See also:art on a mind too refined to be led into crudeness, too inventive and receptive to neglect any of the new See also:artistic resources within its See also:cognizance, and too superficial to grasp their real meaning. His mastery of the violoncello, and his advanced sense of beauty in instrumental See also:tone-See also:colour, must have made even his earlier See also:works seem to contemporaries at least as novel and mature as any of those experiments at which Haydn, with eight years more of See also:age and experience, was labouring in the development of the true new forms. Most of Boccherini's technical resources proved useless to Haydn, and resemblances occur only in Haydn's earliest works (e.g. most of the slow movements of the quartets in op. 3 and in some as See also:late as op. 17); whichever derived the characteristics of such movements from the other, the See also:advantage is decidedly with Boccherini. But the progress of music did not See also:lie in the See also:production of novel beauties of instrumental tone in a See also:style in which polyphonic organization was either deliberately abandoned or replaced by a pleasing illusion, while the See also:form in its larger aspects was a See also:mere inorganic amplification of the old See also:suite-forms, which presupposed a genuine polyphonic organization as the vitalizing principle of their otherwise purely decorative nature. The true tendency of the new See also:sonata forms was to make instrumental music dramatic in its variety and contrasts, instead of merely decorative.

Haydn from the outset buried himself with the handling of new rhythmic proportions; and if it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the surprising beauty of colour in such a specimen of Boccherini's 125 See also:

string-quintets as that in E See also:major (containing the popular See also:minuet) is perhaps more See also:modern and certainly safer in performance than any See also:special effect Haydn ever achieved, it is nevertheless true that even this beauty fails to justify the length and monotony of the See also:work. Where Haydn uses any fraction of the resources of such a style, the ultimate effect is in proportion to a purpose of which Boccherini, with all his genuine admiration of his See also:elder brother in art, could form no conception. Boccherini's works are, however, still indispensable for violoncellists, both in their See also:education and their See also:concert repertories; and his position in musical See also:history is assured as that of the most See also:original and, next to See also:Tartini, perhaps the greatest writer of music for stringed See also:instruments in the late Italian amplifications of the older quasi-polyphonic sonata or suite-form that survived into the beginning of the 19th See also:century in the works of Nardini. Boccherini may safely be regarded as its last real See also:master. He was wittily characterized by the contemporary violinist Puppo as " the wife of Haydn "; which is very true, if See also:man and woman are two different See also:species; but not as true as e.g. the equally See also:common saying that " See also:Schubert is the wife of See also:Beethoven," and still less true than that " See also:Vittoria is the wife of See also:Palestrina." His See also:life, with a See also:Catalogue raisonne, was published by L. Picquot (1851). (D. F.

End of Article: BOCCHERINI, LUIGI (1743-1805)

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