Composer Luigi Boccherini died in obscurity, but his work deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Haydn's, writes Eileen Battersby
Discussing the evolution of the string quartet invariably leads to talk of Joseph Haydn, considered the father of the form. Yet the Austrian child of the baroque was not alone. The Italian master, Luigi Boccherini, who died in Madrid 200 years ago, also has a claim. Far less well-known than Haydn, Boccherini is something of an acquired taste and his comparative obscurity is due to his having lived in isolation in Spain, at an alienating remove from Vienna or the major 18th-century German music centres.
Although he left a large body of chamber music, his fame had tended to rest on his Minuet in A, taken from the String Quintet No 5 in E, featuring two cellos. His music possesses the charm and elegance of Haydn without ever achieving the depth of passion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his Stabat Mater (1781), which defers to Pergolesi's definitive and enduring masterpiece composed in 1736, only to fall short of the profundity of the earlier work through a diffident austerity.
But there is immense beauty, and Boccherini remains central to late Italian baroque as well as to the string quartet and quintet. Since its inception in 1990, Fabio Biondi's exciting ensemble, Europa Galante, has performed Boccherini's music around the world. In 2001 it recorded the string quintets, and two years later it made a colourful recording of the guitar quintets, performed by two violins, viola, cello and guitar (not forgetting castanets). The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet has also recorded Boccherini and performed the String Quartet in C Minor during this year's Music in Great Irish Houses series.
Violinist Keith Pascoe, of the Vanbrugh, has proved a passionate champion of Boccherini's work. He believes him to be neglected and has spoken enthusiastically and convincingly about the music.
Boccherini's life and career began well, only to end sadly. Born into an artistic family in Lucca, Tuscany, in 1743, he was the son of a musician father, Leopoldo Boccherini (1712-1766), a cellist who taught the young Boccherini for a time. The family home was busy with music, dance and literary activity. One of Boccherini's brothers wrote librettos for opera and oratorios for Haydn and Salieri, Mozart's thorn. By the age of nine, Boccherini had moved on to study under Domenico Francesco Vannucci, the maestro di cappella at Lucca Cathedral and a cellist in his own right.
Within four years, the boy, then aged 13, had progressed a further important step and was ready for Rome, where he became the student of another cellist, Giovanni Battista Costanzi (1704-1778), who was at that time maestro di cappella at St Peter's. It was there that Boccherini probably began to study composition. He made his debut in 1756, the year of Mozart's birth, and performed in the first public string quartets heard in Milan.
Between 1757 and 1762, he spent several periods performing with his father in the Imperial Theatre orchestra in Vienna, capital of the empire to which most of Italy then belonged.
In 1764, at 21, he returned home to Lucca to give an important recital. He was now a virtuoso cellist. Moving on to Milan, he performed in a series of concerts of the music of Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701-75), by then a major European composer credited as being the father of Haydn's style. Developments such as this suggest that Boccherini had quickly won a place for himself in the Italian music scene of his time.
What happened next is interesting - and crucial. Along with another musician, Filippo Manfredi (1731-1777), Boccherini began touring, eventually arriving in Paris. In 1768, the Spanish ambassador heard him perform and invited him to Madrid. Boccherini settled there and was based in the Spanish court. He had been thinking of moving to England, but changed his mind.
THERE WERE PROBLEMS, with Boccherini having to face the resentment of the Italian music director. However, he secured the patronage of the king's youngest brother, for whom he composed a number of string quintets. From Spain, he also succeeded in finding an additional patron in Prince Frederick William of Prussia, himself as keen amateur cellist, who commissioned quartets and quintets. Boccherini's music filtered across Europe and he had a pension.
But distance created isolation and practical difficulties. Boccherini's publisher, Pleyel, who was based in Paris, cheated him, refused to return manuscripts and demanded changes to suit popular taste. All of this was unsettling, and in 1785 he lost a valuable supporter when his patron, the king's brother, died.
There were personal losses too: his first wife died young, as did two daughters, and although he remarried, that wife also died and another daughter.
When Frederick William died in 1797, Boccherini managed to retain his position as court composer for a further 18 months. He suffered from TB for many years and, despite his fame, died in poverty in Madrid in 1805. Ironically, soon after his death, his reputation began to soar, particularly in France.
Yet none of his sorrows are reflected in his music. It has life, rococo charm, often gaiety, and delicate detail. Boccherini was known for his good humour. He composed about 300 works, including quartets, quintets and trios, 30 symphonies and, as expected from a cellist, at least 11 cello concertos.
He never lost his feel for the Italian vocal tradition. True, at times, one hears echoes of Haydn, but then Boccherini had spent time in Vienna. There is also a rich Spanish colour, reflecting the folk idioms of his adopted country. Above all, there is his characteristic Italian lightness of touch.
The current belated, though welcome, interest in baroque music has drawn more performers, as well as audiences, to this richest of repertoires. But for all the delights it is difficult to argue the case for Boccherini against Haydn.
Born 11 years before the Italian, Haydn also survived him by four years and produced a massive body of diverse and deceptively radical work. The challenge for Haydn was to live and work in the shadow of the mercurial Mozart.
Similarly, Boccherini remains a handmaid to Haydn - but such judgments do no service to any of the three. At his best, in the quartets and quintets, Boccherini the outsider demonstrates a sophisticated melodic style graced with warmth, wit and energy.
HIS STRING QUINTETS Nos 1, 4, 5 and 6, performed by Europa Galante with immense flair and acceptable showmanship, are available on the Veritas label.The guitar quintets as performed by Pepe Romero and the St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble (Philips) are an exciting and useful introduction.
Claudio Scimone puts the I Solisti Veneti ensemble, with soloist soprano Cecilia Gasdia, through its paces in a diligent recording of Stabat Mater (Erato). This is a work that may be more cerebral than emotional, but it helps open one's mind to Boccherini as a composer who was a product of a world that became closed to him relatively early in his career but who never forgot his traditions.