Nationality: Italian

RESPIGHI, Ottorino

Photograph of Ottorino Respighi (1934) by Ghitta Lorell

Born in Bologna, July 9, 1879
Died in Rome, April 18, 1936

Respighi studied violin and viola at the Liceo Musicale, Bologna, as well as composition. He also had some composition lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov when he was employed as a violist in Russia.
Respighi was an enthusiastic transcriber of 17th and 18th C., the influence of which can be seen in his compositions.
For much of his career Respighi taught composition at the Liceo Musicale di S Cecilia in Rome.¹

Short biography

Pieces

Classical Italian

ROSSINI, Gioachino

Born in Pesaro, Feb 29, 1792
Died in Passy, Nov 13, 1868

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Italian

ROTA, Nino

Born in Milan, Dec 3, 1911
Died in Rome, April 10, 1979

Rota was a prodigy whose work was first performed in 1923 when he was 12.
His mother was a pianist and his grandfather was a composer.
Rota studied at the Conservatorio di S Cecilia in Rome and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. While living in the USA he became friends with Aaron Copland.
In addition to composing film scores for Fellini (La Strada, 8 ½, La dolce vita), Franco Zeffirelli(Romeo and Juliet) and many other directors, he produced a large body of concert music (orchestral, chamber, opera, sacred, ballets). Rota’s music is notable for cross-pollination between his cinematic and concert styles.²

Short biography

Pieces

The Godfather II: The Immigrant

Classical Italian

SALIERI, Antonio

Portrait of Antonio Salieri (1815) by Joseph Willibrord Mähler

Born in Legnago, Aug 18, 1750
Died in Vienna, May 7, 1825

Salieri spent most of his career in Vienna, where he was a major arbiter of musical style.

Salieri “could bind all the power of German music to the sweet Italian style.”
A Classical-era critic, on Salieri ³

Short biography

Pieces

Angiolina, or The Whispered Marriage

Baroque Italian

SAMMARTINI, Giuseppe

Born in Milan, Jan 6, 1695
Died in London, c. Nov 17–23, 1750

In case you wanted to know, his full name was Giuseppe Francesco Gaspare Melchiorre Baldassare Sammartini.⁴

Born in Milan, Sammartini was the son of French oboist Alexis St. Martin and brother of composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. Both brothers played the oboe.
Sammartini spent most of his adult career in England, where Handel wrote challenging obbligato oboe parts for him in his operas.
Sammartini was also the music instructor to the Princess of Wales and her children.

“The finest performer on the hautboy in Europe.”
Giuseppe Sammartini’s obituary

Sammartini’s music was “full of science, originality and fire.”
Music historian Charles Burney ⁵

Short biography

Pieces

Baroque Italian

SCARLATTI, Alessandro

Born in Palermo, May 2, 1660
Died in Naples, Oct 22, 1725

Alessandro Scarlatti is best known as a key founder of the 18^th C. Neapolitan school of opera.
He also composed a large number of oratorios, which were a popular genre in Rome (possibly because the Pope expressed an opposition to opera).
Alessandro Scarlatti was the father keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) (and nine other children incidentally).⁶

Biography

Pieces

Baroque Italian

SCARLATTI, Domenico

Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti (1738), by Domingo Antonio Velasco

Born in Naples, Oct 26, 1685
Died in Madrid, July 23, 1757

Son of Neapolitan composer Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti was best known as a keyboard virtuoso and a composer of keyboard sonatas.
- In 1705 Alessandro sent his son Domenico to Venice to carve out a musical career for himself away from the family influence. Alessandro wrote about Domenico in a letter dated May 30, 1705, describing him as “an eagle whose wings are grown; he must not remain idle in the nest, and I must not hinder his flight.”
He spent the early part of his career in Italy under his father’s shadow, and the latter part as a court musician in Portugal and Spain.
Fun facts: Domenico Scarlatti’s friendship with Handel
- They met in Rome and competed against each other in a harpsichord and organ competition.
  - Who won? On organ, the winner was Handel; on harpsichord, it was a draw.
- One of Handel’s early biographers, John Mainwaring, attributed to Handel the following quote about Scarlatti: “besides his great talents as an artist, he had the sweetest temper, and the genteelest behavior.”
- The same biographer recounts this anecdote of Handel and Scarlatti meeting in Venice during a masquerade: [Handel] “was discovered there at a Masquerade, while he was playing on a harpsichord in his visor. Scarlatti happened to be there, and affirmed that it could be no one but the famous Saxon, or the devil.” ⁷

Short biography

Pieces

Sonata K. 9

Classical Italian

SIRMEN, Maddalena

Born in Venice, Dec 9, 1745
Died in Venice, May 18, 1818

Born Maddalena Laura Lombardini

Sirmen was a Venetian singer, violinist and composer.
Sirmen studied music at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti, one of Venice’s charity music schools for girls. However, she was probably not charity student; she likely chose to enroll there to participate in a quality all-girls’ music education.
Sirmen also studied violin with Giuseppe Tartini.
In 1767, Sirmen married the violinist Ludovico Sirmen, with whom she concertized throughout Europe. After 1771, she toured Europe on her own as a violinist and singer, appearing in London at the Bach-Abel concerts, as well as Paris, St. Petersburg, Dresden, and other cultural centers.⁸

Biography from Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy

Pieces

6 quartetti (Six String Quartets, 1769)

Baroque Italian

TARTINI, Giuseppe

Born in Pirano, Istria [now Piran, Istra, Slovenia], April 8, 1692
Died in Padua, Feb 26, 1770

Tartini was a virtuosic self-taught violinist, a teacher of violin, a composer, and a writer on music theory.
Tartini’s parents intended for him to become a priest, though he focused his studies on law and fencing more than theology. He rebelled soon after his father’s death and got married, and actually had to go into hiding in a monastery in a different town to escape the wrath of his bishop and his family.
Tartini preferred to compose for his own instrument, the violin, going to far as to refuse Venetian opera companies’ requests to write operas.
Musicologists have found it nearly impossible to date most of Tartini’s compositions. He purposefully refused to put dates on his manuscripts, and he often returned to them multiple times throughout his life to revise.⁹
His letter on violin technique to his student, composer Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, is a valuable reference on historic violin pedagogy.

Biography from AllMusic

Pieces

Violin Sonata in g minor, B.g5, “The Devil’s Trill”

Baroque Italian

TORELLI, Giuseppe

Born in Verona, April 22, 1658
Died in Bologna, Feb 8, 1709¹⁰

Biography

Pieces

Baroque Italian

UCCELLINI, Marco

Image courtesy of The Audio DB

Born c1603 or 1610
Died in Forlimpopoli, near Forlì, Sept 11, 1680

Marco Uccellini studied music in Assisi, possibly under composer, violinist, and choirmaster Giovanni Battista Buonamente.
- At some point before 1639, Uccellini settled in Modena, where he served first as head of instrumental music at the Este court and then as maestro di cappella at the local cathedral in 1647.
- From 1665 until his death, Uccellini served as maestro di cappella at the Farnese court at Parma.
Unfortunately, none of the music and opera that Uccellini wrote while at the Farnese court has survived. His only surviving manuscripts include seven collections of instrumental music, a collection of psalm settings, and a Marian litany for voices and instruments (the latter two are known as the Salmi concertati).
- Of his surviving scores, Uccellini’s sonatas for solo violin (opp. 4 and 5) are perhaps the most well-known today and represent the highest point of development for the genre at the time.¹¹