ASTORGA, EMANUELE GIOCCHINO CESARE RINCON, BARON D' (1680-c. Italian musical composer, was born at Naples, and had a romantic career which has lost nothing at the hands of his biographers ; he is said, on doubtful evidence, to have been the son of a baron of Sicily who was executed for his activities in the attempts to throw off the Spanish yoke, and to have been a pupil, at Palermo, of Francesco Scarlatti. The established facts concerning him- are indeed few enough. They are : that the opera Da f ne was written and conducted by the composer in Barcelona in 1709; that he visited London in 1714; that his Stabat Mater had its first public performance at Oxford many years later; and that he retired eventually to Bohemia, where he died in a castle which had been given to him in the domains of Prince Lobkowitz, in Raudnitz. Astorga deserves remembrance for his dignified and pathetic Stabat Mater, and for his numerous chamber-cantatas for one or two voices. He was one of the last composers to carry on the traditions of this form of chamber-music as perfected by Alessandro Scarlatti.