Bernardo Pasquini

Bernardo Pasquini was an Italian Baroque composer, harpsichordist and organist, born in Massa-e-Cozzile, Tuscany. He held prominent positions in Rome and worked under the protection of patrons such as the Borghese family and Queen Christina of Sweden. His extensive output includes operas, oratorios, cantatas and keyboard works, and he is considered one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord between Girolamo Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti.

He was born on either 7 or 8 December 1637 and later studied with Antonio Cesti, Loreto Vittori, and Mariotto Bocciantini. As a youth he moved with his uncle to Ferrara, where he served as organist of the Accademia della Morte between 1653 and 1655. Drawn to Rome, he became organist of Santa Maria in Vallicella in 1657 and, in 1664, of both Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Maria in Ara Coeli before entering long-term service with the Borghese family in 1667.

Pasquini composed operas in honor of Queen Christina of Sweden, including L’Alcasta in 1673 and Il Lisimaco in 1681, and wrote the opera Dov’è amore è pieta in 1679 to a libretto by Cristoforo Ivanovich. Between 1671 and 1692 he produced a large body of stage works that were performed in Rome and other major Italian cities. During Alessandro Scarlatti’s second Roman period, he frequently collaborated with Scarlatti and Corelli, especially in events connected with the Academy of Arcadia, of which he became a member in 1706.

Pasquini was also an influential teacher whose pupils included Tommaso Bernardo Gaffi, his nephew Felice Bernardo Ricordati, Georg Muffat, Johann Philipp Krieger, Floriano Arresti, Johann Georg Christian Störl, Franz Jakob Horneck, and possibly Ferdinand Tobias Richter and Carlo Domenico Draghi. His keyboard music is largely preserved in four manuscript volumes compiled between 1691 and 1708, now held in the Berlin State Library and the British Library.

He died in Rome on 21 or 22 November 1710 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where a monument was erected in his honor by Ricordati and Gaffi. One of his harpsichord pieces was later orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi for the suite Gli uccelli.

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