Felice Giardini (1716 - 1796) was an Italian composer and violinist. // Events August 5 - In the Battle of Peterwardein 40. ... Year 1796 (MDCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Monday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... A violinist is an instrumentalist who plays the violin. ...

Felice Giardini (1716-1796) was born in Turin. When it became clear that he was a child prodigy, his father sent him to Milan. There he studied singing, harpsichord and violin but it was on the latter that he became a famous virtuoso. By the age of 12, he was already playing in theater orchestras. In a famous incident about this time, Giardini, who was serving as assistant concertmaster during an opera, played a solo passage for violin, the composer Jomelli had written. He decided to show off his skills and improvised several bravura variations which Jomelli had not written. Although the audience applauded loudly, Jomelli, who happened to be there, was not pleased and suddenly stood up and slapped the young man in the face. Giardini, years later, remarked, “it was the most instructive lesson I ever received from a great artist." During the 1750s, Giardini toured Europe as a violinist, scoring successes in Paris, Berlin, and especially in England where he eventually settled. For many years, he served as the concertmaster and director of the Italian Opera in London and gave solo concerts under the auspices of J.C. Bach with whom he was a close friend. He was widely regarded as the greatest musical performing artist before the public. (1755-1770). In 1784, he returned to Naples to run a theater, however, there he encountered financial setbacks. In 1793, he returned to England to try his luck. But times had changed and he was no longer remembered. He then went to Russia, but again had little luck, dying in Moscow in 1796. Torino redirects here. ... Milan (Italian: ; Lombard: Milán (listen)) is the main city of northern Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. ... Harpsichord in the Flemish style A harpsichord is any of a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument currently called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the muselar virginals and the spinet. ... The violin is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Berlin is the capital city and one of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany. ... Italian opera can be divided into three periods, the Baroque, the Romantic and the modern. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Johann Christian Bach (September 5, 1735 – January 1, 1782) was a composer of the Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. ...

Giardini was a prolific composer writing for virtually every genre which then existed. His two main areas, however, were opera and chamber music. Virtually all of his music is out of print with the exception of a few songs and works of chamber music. As a string player, he knew how to make string instruments sound their best. His chamber music combines the so-called “Style Gallant” with the mid 18th classicism of J.C. Bach, the Stamitzes and the Mannheim school. In the “Style Gallant”, the writing emphasizes the soloistic qualities of the instruments, rather than integrated part-writing to create a whole. While today, the string quartet is the “King” of chamber music ensembles, during the third quarter of the 18th century, the string trio was the most popular chamber ensemble and virtually all of the active composers lavished their talents on them. Boccherini, Haydn, Pleyel and Mozart, to name but a few, all spent time and effort writing trios. Giardini, although he did write string quartets and quartets for other instruments--a new and evolving form at the time--, concentrated on writing trios, primarily those for violin, viola and cello of which he wrote at least 18. The Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy. ... Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. ... Mannheim is a city in Germany. ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ... A string trio is a group of three string instruments or a piece written for such a group. ... Luigi Boccherini (February 19, 1743 – May 28, 1805) was a classical era composer and cellist from Italy, mostly known for one particular minuet from one of his string quintets, and the Cello Concerto in B flat major (G 482). ... (Franz) Joseph Haydn (in German, Josef; he never used the Franz) (March 31, 1732 – May 31, 1809) was a leading composer of the classical period. ... Ignaz Pleyel (June 18, 1757–November 14, 1831) was an Austrian composer of the Classical music era. ... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) was one of the most significant and influential of all composers of Western classical music. ...

References

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, Ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan 1980. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
• Some of the information on this page appears on the website of Edition Silvertrust but permission has been granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

External links

• Felice Giardini String Trios sound-bites and short biolgraphy