Giuseppe Maria Jacchini

Jacchini was a cellist who adeptly composed for his own instrument as well as for the trumpet and strings. Through the course of his compsitions he would often include imitative phrases, as if in dialogue, between the trumpet and the cello, or, at times, between the trumpet and other strings. Although the cello maintained a certain obligatory position in some of his compositions, he released it from this narrow perspective giving it life in the ranks of melodic instrumentation. Although Jacchini did not succeed in giving the cello a strictly solo voice, he was one of the first composers, however presumptive, to yield the cello as a solo instrument. Jacchini was in service to S Petrino in Bologna in a sporadic fashion only because of the dissolution of the cappella musicale between 1696 and 1701. He was a member of The Accademia Filharmonica and was a continuous link for the trumpet and string sonata tradition established by Cazzati, Torelli and Perti. Jacchini's works were known and appreciated outside Bologna and praised before his teacher Domenico Gabrieli. ~ Keith Johnson