Early Music

The article deals with Boccherini as a cellist and as a composer of solo music for the cello on the basis of new sources. Apart from the encouragement of his father, Leopoldo Boccherini, and Giacomo Puccini, chapelmaster in Lucca, decisive influences on the up-and-coming virtuoso are hard to ascertain. Possible contact with other cellists such as Giovanni Battista Costanzi and Stefano Galeotti are considered. The earlier conjecture that Boccherini may have played a Stradivari instrument is qualified. In any case, in 1787 Boccherini possessed a (Jacob) Stainer cello as well as a small cello. This may have been an alto cello, as Pleyel calls it in the quintet editions, that could have been used for the performance of solo pieces in a high register, like the Sonata L'Imperatrice. The reasons why Boccherini's cello sonatas are actually duets for two cellos are considered. In the main movements of the concertos, Boccherini makes use of a popular early classical model, within which he proceeds in a thoroughly different manner. A quotation from Christoph Willibald Gluck can be detected in the Concerto G483.