Carlo Zuccari

Carlo Zuccari (Casalmaggiore, near Cremona, 1704 – Casalmaggiore, 1792) was an Italian violinist and composer whose work belongs to the instrumental tradition of northern Italy in the eighteenth century, heir to the school of Corelli. His importance rests chiefly on his music for violin, a substantial but conservative repertoire.

His training was peripatetic. He studied the violin in his native town and then in Parma, Guastalla and Bologna, before completing it in Cremona with Gasparo Visconti; counterpoint was taught to him by Giuseppe Gonelli. In 1723 he arrived in Vienna as part of the entourage of Count Pertusati and, after winning the favour of the imperial court, spent four years in Olomouc and visited several German cities. He married in 1733 and, in 1736, settled in Milan, where he founded a school. In 1741 he took part in the celebrated academy of the Collegio dei Nobili directed by G. B. Sammartini, which engaged him on several later occasions.

Around 1760 he was living in London, where he joined the orchestra of the Italian opera and published some works for violin, among them a set of twelve adagios in simple and ornamented versions, The True Method of Playing an Adagio. By 1765 he had returned to Italy and directed an orchestra under Sammartini in Cremona. Burney recorded having heard him in Milan in 1770. In 1778 he retired permanently to Casalmaggiore.

In his sonatas for one or two violins, which make up the bulk of his surviving output, conservative traits are evident. He regularly adopted the three-movement cycle, with the sequence slow–fast–fast in the solo sonatas and fast–slow–fast in the trio sonatas, and gave an elaborate treatment to the melody, leaving the bass outside the thematic argument. Nevertheless, his harmonic and contrapuntal language scarcely departs from that of Corelli's followers. His command of counterpoint stands out above all, as shown by the fugue of the second solo sonata, in which the violin suggests two or even three voices through double-stopping.