A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Franciscello

FRANCISCELLO, a great violoncellist of the early part of last century, but of whom neither the date nor place of birth or death are known, and who in fact would have left no trace of his existence but for the fact that he was heard by Quantz, Benda, and Geminiani. He seems to have first appeared in Rome shortly after the death of Corelli (1713). He was at Naples in 1725; Quantz heard him there, and Geminiani, there or in Rome, was witness to the rapture with which the great Alessandro Scarlatti accompanied him on the harpsichord. In 1730 he was at Vienna, where F. Benda, then a young man, was so struck by his style as to say that it influenced him for ever after. He is heard of afterwards at Genoa, where he may have died about 1750, but nothing is known.

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