BOCCHERINI, LUIGI (1743-1805), Italian composer, son of an Italian bass-player, was born at Lucca, and studied at Rome, where he became a fine 'cellist, and soon began to compose. He returned to Lucca, where for some years he was prominent as a player, and there he produced two oratorios and an opera. He toured in Europe, and in 1768 was received in Paris by Gossec and his circle with great enthusiasm, his instrumental pieces being highly applauded; and from 1769 to 1785 he held the post of "composer and virtuoso" to the king of Spain's brother, the in fante Luis, at Madrid. He afterwards became "chamber-corn poser" to King Frederick William II. of Prussia, till 1797, when he returned to Spain. He died at Madrid on May 28, 1805.
As an admirer of Haydn, and a voluminous writer of instru mental music, chiefly for the violoncello, Boccherini represents the effect of the rapid progress of a new art on a mind too re fined to be led into crudeness, too inventive and receptive to neglect any of the new artistic resources within its cognizance, and too superficial to grasp their real meaning. His mastery of the violoncello, and his advanced sense of beauty in instrumental tone-colour, must have made even his earlier works seem to contemporaries at least as novel and mature as any of those ex periments at which Haydn, with eight years more of age and ex perience, was labouring in the development of the true new forms.
Most of Boccherini's technical resources proved useless to Haydn, and resemblances occur only in Haydn's earliest works (e.g., in the slow movements of the quartets in op. 3 and in some as late as op. 17). Whichever derived the characteristics of such movements from the other, the advantage is decidedly with Boc cherini. But the progress of music did not lie in the production of novel beauties of instrumental tone in a style in which poly phonic organization was either deliberately abandoned or replaced by a pleasing illusion, while the form in its larger aspects was a mere inorganic amplification of the old suite-forms, which pre supposed a genuine polyphonic organization as the vitalizing prin ciple of their otherwise purely decorative nature. The true ten dency of the new sonata forms_ was to make instrumental music dramatic in its variety and contrasts, instead of merely deco rative. Haydn from the outset busied himself with the handling of new rhythmic proportions; and if it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the surprising beauty of colour in such a specimen of Boccherini's 125 string-quintets as that in E major (containing the popular minuet) is more striking than Haydn's best scoring, it is nevertheless true that even this beauty fails to justify the length and monotony of the work. Where Haydn uses any frac tion of the resources of such a style, the ultimate effect is in pro portion to a purpose of which Boccherini, with all his genuine ad miration of his elder brother in art, could form no conception.
Boccherini's works are, however, still indispensable for violon cellists, both in their education and their concert repertories; and his position in musical history is assured as that of one of the most original writers of music for stringed instruments in the late Italian amplifications of the older quasi-polyphonic sonata or suite-form that survived in his hands into the early 19th cen tury. Boccherini may safely be regarded as its last real master. He was wittily characterized by the contemporary violinist Puppo as "the wife of Haydn"; which is good enough praise for those who hold a restricted view of woman's sphere.
See Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Luigi Boccherini, suivie du catalogue raisonne, de toutes ses oeuvres, tant publiees qu'ineditees, by L. Picquot (1851). (D. F. T.)