Italy

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Cello

Recent study of Luigi Boccherini's skeleton revealed the threat of scoliosis for cellists

Luigi Boccherini was born in the Italian town of Lucca in Tuscany in 1743. He was the third child of a double-bass...
PIANO

Gondolier songs as the inspiration behind the romantic genre of Barcarolle

Originally a Venetian gondolier’s song, Barcarolle is characterized by gently rocking rhythms reminiscent of the...
ORCHESTRA

Amsterdam's free spirit for the Italian virtuoso

Pietro Locatelli (1695—1764), Italian violinist and composer, was one of the first great violinists who practiced...
Choir

The boundless Flemish heritage of Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac (1450—1517) was a versatile and prolific Flemish composer of both secular and church music. He was a...
Violin

Only 18 sonatas survived to be the only proof of the maestro's life

Giovanni Battista Fontana was a composer and violinist in the early Baroque period. Unfortunately, only a couple of...
LUTE

Neapolitan lutier died in terrible plague that destroyed the kingdom

The worst disaster to strike the kingdom and city of Naples in the 1600s was the plague of 1656. The outbreak of the...
Composer

Venetian architecture sparked a new musical era in Europe

Giovanni Gabrieli was one of the most influential musicians of his time, representing the culmination of the Venetian...
Violin

150 composers contributed to La Folia through the centuries

La Folia is one of the most revered melodies in music history. Originating as a late fifteenth-century Portuguese dance...
ORCHESTRA

Obscured by Vivaldi, an Italian virtuoso found fans in England

Francesco Saverio Geminiani—influential Italian violinist, composer, and theorist—was born in 1687 in the scenic town of...
FILM

Full-method approach to the score for Shakespeare's play

The classic Shakespeare play The Merchant of Venice had seen many adaptations, one of them a 2004 venture for the big...
ORCHESTRA

Alessandro Scarlatti: Italian opera innovator was lost in history for two centuries

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was among the most important Italian composers of the late Baroque period. His huge...
VIOLA

Indecent Ciaconne dance came from the New World and swept Europe off its feet

Chaconne or Ciaconne is a fiery dance popularized in Spain in 17th century which later gave birth to a new musical form...
ORCHESTRA

Bernini's famous fountains are filled with Respighi's music

Fontane di Roma is a symphonic poem written by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi in 1916. It depicts Rome’s...
FIDDLE

The jig dance tradition: five centuries old and still counting

Jig is a folk dance that became popular in Scotland and northern England in the 16th century and in Ireland in the 18th...
OBOE

Corelli's famous violin piece rearranged for oboe three centuries later

One of the seminal figures of early Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli, was the master of violin which supremacy in the...
LUTE

Da Vinci's painting process depended on music

Leonardo Da Vinci was a master of many skills: architecture, astronomy, painting, sculpture, mathematics, anatomy,...
ORCHESTRA

Albinoni's famous Adagio is unusually solemn and offbeat because it wasn't, in fact, written by Tomaso Albinoni

Adagio in G Minor, attributed to 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni, is widely familiar through its often use...
ORCHESTRA

Vivaldi's Bohemian Concerto was the last gift for the dying lute

Within Antonio Vivaldi's creative period, the lute was going out of fashion as the lead solo instrument, though its...
Violin

Paganini's one-stringed soap opera

The life of Niccolò Paganini was surrounded by a number of legends. A particularly colorful story tells of Paganini...
HARPSICHORD

Isabella Leonarda: convent star of the Baroque era

Isabella Leonarda’s works include examples of nearly every sacred genre: motets and sacred concertos for one to four...
Violin

Vintage performance of Vivaldi's concerto for four violins

Antonio Vivaldi wrote many concerts for violin, but only a few for four violin soloists. Concerto for Four Violins was...

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