Luigi Boccherini
(1743–1805)
Who Was
Luigi Boccherini?
A Brief Introduction
Luigi Boccherini was an Italian composer who made his career largely in Spain—like the Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), in an earlier generation. But whereas Scarlatti’s lifelong patron was a keyboard player, Queen Maria Barbara, Boccherini was in service to a royal prince, Infante Luis of Spain, whose greatest passion was for chamber music.
Boccherini’s output in this arena was colossal: almost 100 string quartets, nearly 150 string quintets, around 40 sonatas, and a dozen concertos for the cello, his own instrument. By comparison, his vocal compositions were few: 15 concert arias, a similar number of sacred pieces, and an opera. Around a quarter of this prodigious quantity of music has been published in modern editions, including a large majority of the string quartets, but Boccherini is known for just a few works: the minuet from a string quintet, a Cello Concerto in B-flat major (that has stayed in the repertory in a Romanticized arrangement by Friedrich Grützmacher), and Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid) for string quintet.
Early Years: Education and Creative Beginnings
Boccherini began his musical training with his father, Leopoldo—a singer and bass player working in Lucca. In 1753, Leopoldo sent his son to a music teacher in Rome. But the boy was back in Lucca by 1756, and took part in family performance tours of Italy the following year. In 1758, the father and son travelled to Vienna, where they joined the orchestra of the German theatre for several months. They returned for two seasons, in 1760‒61 and 1763‒64. Luigi’s earliest compositions date from this period and include his first set of six string quartets, Op. 2 (1761). There is no evidence that he met Joseph Haydn while he was in Vienna, but he certainly knew Haydn’s music, even if his own was more simply graceful and melodious. (These qualities later earned him the epithet “Haydn’s wife.”)
Soon after his father’s death, in 1766, Boccherini went on tour with a colleague from Lucca, the violinist Filippo Manfredi. They reached Paris in 1767 and stayed a few months during which Boccherini arranged for publication of his early chamber works. More of a stir was made by the sonatas he wrote for Manfredi in 1768 (Op. 5): these remained in circulation—both manuscript copies and printed—into the 19th century. Boccherini and Manfredi were planning to go on to London, but the Spanish ambassador in Paris arranged posts for them in Madrid. They arrived there in the spring of 1768. Manfredi returned to Lucca in 1772, but Boccherini, who had married and gained a lucrative position with Infante Luis, remained in Spain to the end of his life.
Middle Years: The Prince’s Musician
Luis had contested the succession of his elder brother Carlos in 1759, and when he married, in 1776, he was exiled from the capital. Taking his whole household with him, including Boccherini and the other musicians, he settled in the small town of Arenas de San Pedro, where he had the prominent architect Ventura Rodríguez design him a palace. (His patronage of the arts extended also to the painter Francisco Goya.) He held Boccherini under contract to produce annually three sets of chamber works, each comprising six pieces—a quantity the composer fulfilled until 1781, but not thereafter.
The prince had a court string quartet for which Boccherini wrote seven sets during the years of his employment by Luis (from 1770 to the prince’s death in 1785). Near the beginning of this period, he introduced a new genre: the string quintet, or string quartet plus cello—a genre which allowed him to add a line of cello virtuosity to the infante’s quartet. That seems to have pleased the prince even more, and Boccherini composed 11 more sets of these by 1785. (His ubiquitous minuet comes from a quintet in his first set, Op. 11 No. 5, composed in 1771.) One of his later quintets is the tone poem Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, depicting an evening of songs and dances that concludes with the beating of the midnight curfew. He arranged this work for piano quintet and guitar quintet. He also produced for Luis sets of string trios, symphonies, and flute quintets (quartet with flute).
Boccherini: Quintet in C major for Two Violins, Viola, and Two Cellos, G. 324, “La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid”
Luis had no objection to Boccherini maintaining his relationships with publishers in Paris, or to him starting a new connection with the publishing house Artaria in Vienna. Through Artaria, he sent an appreciative letter to Haydn, who responded in kind. However, the prince did not condone any association with other patrons, especially Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, who, a cellist himself, was equally enamoured with Boccherini’s string quintets.
Later Years: Working for patrons in Spain and abroad
After Luis’s death, in 1785, Boccherini was almost immediately given posts by Carlos III, Friedrich Wilhelm, and the Duchess of Osuna (who also supported Goya). A few years later, he gained another patron, a Monsieur Boulogne in Paris. Neither this admirer nor the Prussian prince (soon to be king) required Boccherini’s physical presence, and it seems he remained in Arenas. (His first wife died the same year as Luis; two years later he remarried.)
For Friedrich Wilhelm, Boccherini supplied two sets of chamber works annually, mostly string quintets and quartets. For the Duchess of Osuna, who had over 100 works by Boccherini in her library, he composed an opera, La Clementina (1786), for performance in her palace. Boccherini’s music continued to circulate more widely, in both printed and manuscript copies.
The death of Friedrich Wilhelm, in 1797, and the departure of the Duchess and Duke for Paris, in 1799, robbed Boccherini of two major patrons. He arranged several of his works as quintets for guitar and string quartet (for another Spanish grandee), and gained support from Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien Bonaparte, who arrived in 1800 as French ambassador. However, Boccherini’s finances remained depleted, and he suffered the successive losses of his four daughters and second wife. He had to sell a large quantity of his music to the Parisian publisher Ignaz Pleyel but, even so, ended his life in poverty.
Watching and Listening
The Digital Archive includes two videos of the string quintet with the famous minuet (Op. 11 No. 5) and one of La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid. There are also videos of a picturesque guitar quintet—with a fandango finale—and a flute quintet (Op. 55 No. 1) from the composer’s later years (1797).
