Elegy
Giovanni Bottesini
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Browse piano sheets by Giovanni Bottesini on Zen Virtual Piano. Bottesini's father Pietro, a clarinetist and composer, started him very early on the study of music, and from the age of five he had lessons from C. Cogliati, first violin in the orchestra of Crema cathedral. The double bass became his specialty by circumstance: when he applied to the Milan Conservatory in 1835 only two scholarships were still available, one of them for it, and within weeks he could play it well enough to be accepted. Taking up the double bass because a scholarship was still open, and then mastering it within weeks, makes the instrument look like a lucky accident that became a calling. In 1840 he gave his first public concert at the Teatro Comunale in Crema, on the double bass made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore with which he later achieved all his great successes as a virtuoso. In 1846 he was hired, with his former conservatory companion L. Arditi, for the Teatro Tacon in Havana as first double bassist, and made his debut as conductor and opera composer with Cristoforo Colombo in 1847. At the Teatro S. Benedetto in Venice, where he was first double bassist, he met Giuseppe Verdi, who was staging I due Foscari, and they formed a lasting friendship. A friendship begun in a Venice orchestra pit seems to have lasted through the rest of his career. He drew effects from the instrument that had not been heard before, joining daring technique to a noble and intense style, and his agility, strength of hand, skilled use of harmonics, purity of intonation and taste in phrasing were praised. A style praised as both daring and noble, with effects not heard before, points to a player who pushed his instrument well beyond its usual limits. On 24 December 1871 he conducted the first performance of Verdi's Aida at the Khedival Theatre in Cairo. On Verdi's proposal, he was named director of the Parma conservatory on 20 January 1889, and he died in Parma on 7 July 1889. A first performance of Aida in Cairo and a conservatory post proposed by Verdi show how closely his later career stayed tied to that friendship.
Browse piano sheets by Giovanni Bottesini on Zen Virtual Piano.
Bottesini's father Pietro, a clarinetist and composer, started him very early on the study of music, and from the age of five he had lessons from C. Cogliati, first violin in the orchestra of Crema cathedral. The double bass became his specialty by circumstance: when he applied to the Milan Conservatory in 1835 only two scholarships were still available, one of them for it, and within weeks he could play it well enough to be accepted. Taking up the double bass because a scholarship was still open, and then mastering it within weeks, makes the instrument look like a lucky accident that became a calling.
In 1840 he gave his first public concert at the Teatro Comunale in Crema, on the double bass made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore with which he later achieved all his great successes as a virtuoso. In 1846 he was hired, with his former conservatory companion L. Arditi, for the Teatro Tacon in Havana as first double bassist, and made his debut as conductor and opera composer with Cristoforo Colombo in 1847. At the Teatro S. Benedetto in Venice, where he was first double bassist, he met Giuseppe Verdi, who was staging I due Foscari, and they formed a lasting friendship. A friendship begun in a Venice orchestra pit seems to have lasted through the rest of his career.
He drew effects from the instrument that had not been heard before, joining daring technique to a noble and intense style, and his agility, strength of hand, skilled use of harmonics, purity of intonation and taste in phrasing were praised. A style praised as both daring and noble, with effects not heard before, points to a player who pushed his instrument well beyond its usual limits.
On 24 December 1871 he conducted the first performance of Verdi's Aida at the Khedival Theatre in Cairo. On Verdi's proposal, he was named director of the Parma conservatory on 20 January 1889, and he died in Parma on 7 July 1889. A first performance of Aida in Cairo and a conservatory post proposed by Verdi show how closely his later career stayed tied to that friendship.
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Giovanni Bottesini
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Giovanni Bottesini was a double bass virtuoso, composer and conductor who studied at the Milan Conservatory until 1839 and died in Parma on 7 July 1889.
When he applied to the Milan Conservatory in 1835, only two scholarships remained, one of them for the double bass, which he learned within weeks to a standard good enough for admission.
On 24 December 1871 he conducted the first performance of Verdi's Aida at the Khedival Theatre in Cairo.
He used only a three-string double bass, which he judged more resonant than a four-string one, and which was somewhat smaller than the orchestral instrument.