Geminiani francesco biography of rory gilmore wife

Francesco Geminiani was born at Lucca, in Tuscany, in December At an early age he showed considerable talent after being taught violin lessons by his father.

Later he studied the violin under Carlo Ambrogio Lonati in Milan and then in Rome under the celebrated master, Corelli. It is also considered possible that he studied composition with Alessandro Scarlatti whilst staying in Naples. At the age of 20 he returned to his home town of Lucca where he played the violin in the Town Orchestra for three years.

He then moved to Naples in to take up the position as Leader of the Opera Orchestra. By this time he had become recognized as a brilliant violin virtuoso; indeed the orchestra appears to have experienced some difficulty in following him due to his improvisational virtuosity, or, as the music historian Dr. Burney put it, "his unexpected accelerations and relaxations of measure".

In , he tried his fortune in England, where his brilliant violin playing immediately met with great success. London had become a major European music center, thanks in part to Handel, who had himself studied in Rome under Corelli and thus brought a measure of Italian musical style with him.

Francesco Xaverio Geminiani (baptised 5 December – 17 September ) was an Italian violinist, composer, and music theorist.

Geminiani gained much support from the aristocracy and leading figures at the Royal Court, and was invited to play the violin before George I, accompanied at the harpsichord by no less than Handel. He soon established himself in London as the leading master of violin-playing, with his concerts, his published compositions, and his theoretical treatises, the first and most important being "The Art of Playing the Violin" which included all the technical principles of essential violin performance.

He also had aristocratic pupils, among them the Earl of Essex who in tried unsuccessfully to arrange for Geminiani to become Master and Composer of the State Music of Ireland. It was also the Earl of Essex who had to rescue him from prison after he ran into debt through his consuming passion for art-dealing and collecting. This may have led him to leave London for a period in Dublin in , where he rapidly built up a fine reputation as a teacher, performer, concert promoter and musical theorist.