Life
Taken to Rome as an infant, he began vocal study with Pompeo Natali at the age of five and sang in the choir of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini from age eight. At Santi Apostoli he sang and studied counterpoint with Francesco Foggia, where his early compositions were performed. By age sixteen he was maestro di cappella at Santa Maria Maggiore, Monterotondo, a historic church near Rome. In 1673 as maestro for the cathedral at Assisi he began intensive study of the works of Palestrina, and in 1676 moved to the cathedral at Rieti.
In 1677 he returned to Rome for a lifelong appointment as maestro di cappella at the Basilica of San Marco. In addition he held a series of prestigious positions as maestro for Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, Rome (from 1686), at St. John Lateran (from 1708, where Palestrina had served from 1555 to 1560), and for the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s (from 1719, immediately following Domenico Scarlatti), and maestro di cappella at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. For the chapter of San Lorenzo in Damaso, he produced major performances over thirty-five years for the music-loving Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, whose extensive circle of artists included Arcangelo Corelli, George Frideric Handel, both Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Bernardo Pasquini, and Filippo Amadei.
Read more about this topic: Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.”
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“Half life is over now,
And I meet full face on dark mornings
The bestial visor, bent in
By the blows of what happened to happen.
What does it prove? Sod all.”
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