Italian composer, Bernardo Pasquini was one of the foremost keyboard impresarios of his time. Born in Tuscany, he served in Rome from the 1660s as a highly connected organist, teacher, and composer ranging from operas, oratorios, cantatas, motets, and arias to suites, toccatas, variations and sonatas. A probable student of Cesti, Pasquini went on to teach students from many parts of Europe including Domenico Scarlatti. The Italian composer frequently performed with violinist Arcangelo Corelli and the two became members, along with Alessandro Scarlatti, of the Arcadian Academy in 1706.
In service as an organist of S Maria Maggiore in Rome, he obtained the position of organist at S Maria in Aracoeli from 1664 until his death. Pasquini found himself under the patronage of a number of cardinals including Ottobini and Pamphili as well as the Borghese court and the court of Christina, Queen of Sweden, in whose honour an opera of his, Dov’è amore è pieta, was produced in 1679. He composed numerous operas, all staged in Rome between 1672 and 1692, and partially replayed in several Italian theatres (Florence, Pisa, Naples, Ferrara, Perugia, Genoa, Rimini etc.). Consortium Carissimi is pleased to present “Il Tirinto,” on of Pasquini’s comedic operas this coming June, 2016.
In addition to the operas, Pasquini composed a considerable amount of vocal music (much of it lost), including about seventeen oratorios, and over fifty cantatas, but his present reputation rests on his keyboard works, especially his suites and variations, most unpublished during his lifetime.
Listen to his marvelous “Toccata con lo scherzo del Cucco”