Giovanni Battista Costanzi

Giovanni Battista Costanzi - Italian cellist and composer

Person from Italy

Genres: baroque, 18th century, classical period, italian

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About Giovanni Battista Costanzi

Giovanni Battista Costanzi (Rome, 3 September 1704 - Rome, 5 March 1778) was an Italian composer and cellist. In life he was best known with the nicknames Giovannino del Cello or Giovannino da Roma. In 1721 he entered the service of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni , first as aiuto da camera , and then, since 1737, succeeding Arcangelo Corelli as chief of the instruments. In 1727 he made his debut as operatic with L'amor generoso at the Teatro Capranica in Rome, but his first great achievement was with his work Charlemagne in 1729, year from which he was appointed, thanks to the recommendations of Cardinal Ottoboni, maestro di cappella in the most important Romanesque churches: in 1729 in San Luigi dei Francesi , in 1743 at San Marco and in Santa Maria in Vallicella and finally in 1755 became director of the Chapel Giulia in San Pietro. At the same time he had a great reputation for music, which was praised with various honors, including the presidency of the Congregation of Saint Cecilia in Rome in 1740, 1754 and 1769. Among his students was Luigi Boccherini who studied under him In 1757. Costanzi was among the most prolific composers of the eighteenth century , but only a small part of his work survived to this day. Until 1740 he mainly composed secular vocal music, after which he concentrated his attention on sacred music. However, his most important compositional genre was instrumental music; his works for cello structurally follow the schema of the church sonata , but sometimes movements move closer to the scheme from the chamber sonata . As argued by the French composer André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, he was in Rome at its time the most admired composer of sacred music.

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