From virtuosity to the essence of music
Unlike his fellow Tuscan Giovanni Battista Lulli, who received his musical training in France and became the foremost exponent of French musical composition of his age, when the 25-year-old Boccherini arrived in Spain in the autumn of 1768, he was already an accomplished musician of many years standing, a virtuoso at the height of his career who had already achieved a degree of international fame and whose work had been published by several French publishing houses, including the prestigious Vénier. Although he had not scored a complete triumph in Paris, by the time he decided to leave the city that year, he and his inseparable companion, the Italian violinist Filippo Manfredi, had earned themselves an enviable reputation. Before arriving in Paris, he had toured a large part of Italy, achieving success in his native Lucca, and had also won admiration in Vienna, where as a 17-year-old, in 1760, he attracted praise from Gluck with his opus 1, six trios for two violins and cello, which were published some years later by Bailleux of Paris.
On his concert tours, on which he was accompanied, like Mozart, by his father (also called Leopold), a double bass player, he met numerous celebrated musicians, and although he was greatly influenced by the Milanese Giovanni Battista Sammartini, he was to be no less influenced by Manfredi and the violinists Pietro Nardini - a disciple, like the latter, of Tartini - and Giuseppe Maria Cambini, with whom in 1765 he formed part of what was probably the first permanent string quartet in musical history. When he arrived in Madrid at the end of 1768, Boccherini had in his portfolio a sheaf of his own compositions that would in themselves have made a worthy, if small, mark on the history of music. In addition to his op. 1, and another, more accomplished collections of trios – opus 4 of 1766 and the six trios published in 1768 by La Chevardière of Paris - he had composed his magnificent first set of quartets, opus 2 (1761)1; the six duets for two violins, the true opus 3; fourteen cello sonatas; four concertos for cello and orchestra; a symphony; two oratorios; a cantata; two psalm settings; a mass and the opus 5 sonatas for piano or harpsichord with violin accompaniment. In other words, he had written a very considerable quantity of music of various genres for different types of ensemble, proof that he was a young composer with a personality and style of his own. Independently of the enormous development and maturity of his later life and his progressive immersion in the cultural and social life of the Spanish Enlightenment, these qualities were to remain a hallmark of his entire productive life.
Boccherini fell in love, and I like to think that it was for that reason, although it was perhaps, more prosaically, in search of financial gain and social advancement, that he followed the Roman singer Clementina Pelliccia to Spain and succeeded in marrying her in 1769. They were both engaged by the Compañía de los Reales Sitios under the direction of Luigi Marescalchi, and from 1768, the year of their arrival in Spain, they performed together in concerts, operas and recital tours, some of which are documented, in Palma de Mallorca, Aranjuez, Valencia, La Granja and Madrid. The music Boccherini wrote up to the time of his arrival in Spain and before embarking on this new stage in his career is significant in that it clearly shows one of his most striking facets, that of a virtuoso cellist who, apart from composing occasional music, also wrote pieces designed to show his virtuoso skills to their best advantage: the technically difficult, virtuoso cello sonatas and concertos. So, too, would his later and arguably more significant chamber music for bowed instruments.
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