Minueto de l boccherini biography

Luigi Boccherini was born in Lucca, Italy, into a talented artistic family: his father played the cello and the double bass, his brother was a poet and dancer who wrote libretti for Salieri and Haydn, and his sister was a distinguished ballet dancer. He made his public debut as a cellist at the age of only thirteen, and studied composition first with his father, afterwards with the Lucca maestro di cappella Francesco Vanucci, and finally with Costanzi in Rome. When he was fourteen, the first of a series of moves to highly influential European musical capitals began: he and his father were summoned to the imperial capital, Vienna. Here they continued to impress with their concert performances in the court theatre. For the next seven years Boccherini travelled between Vienna and his home town, composing and performing. He also took periods of leave to visit Milan where he is said, in 1765, to have arranged the first public string quartet performances. In 1766 he went on a European tour, ending up in Paris where he came under the patronage of the influential Baron Bagge: a succession of publications of Boccherini’s works followed, including six string quartets, a set of trios, music for violin an

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