Pietro Locatelli

Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695–1764) was an Italian Baroque composer and violinist.
Locatelli was born in Bergamo. He began studying in Rome in autumn 1711, probably under Antonio Montanari or Giuseppe Valentini and perhaps for a short time under Arcangelo Corelli. While in Rome, Locatelli debuted as a composer. In 1721, his XII Concerti grossi, Op. 1, dedicated to Camillo Cybo, was published in Amsterdam.
From 1723 to 1728, Locatelli travelled through Italy and Germany. Mantua, Venice, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfurt and Kassel are the only places he is known to have visited. Most of his concert compositions, including the violin concertos and the capricci, were probably written in this period. They were published later in Amsterdam. It is believed that his performances made him famous, but almost no source attests to his attaining high virtuosity.
Locatelli’s activity at the court of the regent of Mantua, the landgrave Philipp von Hessen-Darmstadt, is attested by a 1725 document in which the landgrave refers to him as “our virtuoso”. How often and in what capacity Locatelli performed at that court is not known.] Also unknown is the time of his activity in Venice, although he certainly went there.
Just one year later, in May 1728, Locatelli visited the Prussian court in Berlin. He moved from Dresden to Potsdam with Augustus II and the elector’s escort of about 500 people, including Johann Georg Pisendel, Johann Joachim Quantz and Silvius Leopold Weiss. A notice about Locatelli’s performance before Frederick William I anecdotally describes the musician’s self-assurance and his vanity in wearing gorgeous, diamond-studded clothes. The aristocratic listeners may have preferred Johann Gottlieb Graun’s violin playing to Locatelli’s.
Locatelli’s last known stop was in Kassel, where he received the very high payment of 80 reichsthaler after his visit to Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, on 7 December 1728. The organist Jacob Wilhelm Lustig stated in 1728 that Locatelli had astonished his listeners with hugely difficult passages while scraping at his violin.
In 1729 Locatelli moved to Amsterdam, where he stayed until his death. He did not compose so much as previously, but gave violin lessons to amateurs and edited his opp. 1–9 and the works of other musicians, such as Giovanni Battista Martini’s Op. 2. Locatelli died on 30 March 1764 in his house on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.
A library with over a thousand documents shows Locatelli’s interest in literature and science. It includes ornithological, theological, church historical, political, geographical, art historical and mathematical works, and literature on music theory dating back to the 16th century.
When Locatelli went to Amsterdam in 1729, he discovered the centre of European music publishing. He published his Opp. 2–6, 8 and 9 and a new edition of Op. 1 in Amsterdam, and Op. 7 in the neighbouring city of Leiden. He took great care to achieve flawless editions. Locatelli gave the well-arranged works to different publishers, and he edited and sold the less-arranged works.

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