A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Somis, Giovanni

SOMIS, Giovanni Battista, violinist, was born in Piedmont in 1676. He studied first under Corelli at Rome, and afterwards under Vivaldi at Venice. After his return to Turin he was appointed solo violinist to the King, and leader of the royal band, a position he retained until his death, which occurred in 1763. After having once settled at Turin he appears scarcely ever to have left it; and since only a single composition of his, a set of sonatas, has been published, there are no means of directly forming an estimate of him as a player; but judging from the style of his numerous and well-known pupils, Somis did not merely hand on the traditions of the great Italian masters, but formed a style of his own, more brilliant and more emotional, marking technically, and also, in a sense, musically, a decided forward step in the art of playing the violin. As the head and founder of the Piedmontese School, and the teacher of Léclair, Giardini, Chiabran and Pugnani—the latter again the teacher of Viotti—he occupies a prominent place in the history of violin-playing, and forms the connecting link between the classical schools of Italy and France. Fétis names as his only published work 'Opera prima di sonate a violino e violoncello o cembalo. Roma 1722.'

[ P.D. ]