Giovanni Piantanida

Giovanni Gualberto Maria Piantanida (Livorno, 1706 – Bologna, 1773) was an Italian violinist and composer of the eighteenth century whose itinerant career, taking him through several European courts and capitals, ended in the chapel of San Petronio in Bologna. He is of interest both for his instrumental skill, which his contemporaries acknowledged, and for the debate that his work as a composer still provokes.

The son of a father from Livorno and a mother from Florence, Piantanida began his professional life in the service of Empress Anna Ivanovna. In 1735 he travelled to St Petersburg with a company of singers that included his wife, Costanza, known as “La Pasterla”. He remained there as a virtuoso and violin teacher until 1737. After a successful season in Hamburg, the couple passed through the Netherlands and reached London in 1739. Over the following years he gave numerous concerts in the English capital, some alongside Handel, and in 1742 he published his six sonatas a tre, Op. 1. He then performed at the Concert Spirituel in Paris (1743) and visited Geneva (1744) before settling permanently in Bologna.

In that city he was appointed first violin of the chapel of San Petronio on 10 March 1752, succeeding Girolamo Nicolò Laurenti. He also joined the Accademia Filarmonica in 1758. His absences between 1762 and 1764, caused by other commitments, led to his dismissal from San Petronio in April 1765. Five years later he reappeared as a soloist in Bologna, and in 1770 he won the competition for the post of conductor of the chapel and violin master of the city, with a monthly salary of 30 lire, although half of it was withheld until the end of the contract to prevent further absences. That same year he was one of the judges of Mozart's application to join the Accademia Filarmonica. Ill health led him in 1772 to appoint an assistant with the right of succession, and he died suddenly on the steps of the orchestra of San Petronio in October 1773, as recorded by the Bolognese chronicler Baldassare Carrati.

Contemporaries compared him with Tartini, although his reputation as a composer was uneven: Torchi admired the skill of his sonatas, while Scheibe and others accused him of plagiarism. A sonata da camera for violin and cello survives in manuscript, and six violin concertos cited in a Breitkopf catalogue of 1762 are lost. His son Gaetano Piantanida, a pianist and composer, trained with him and with Mattei in Bologna, and died in Milan in 1835; there he taught at the Istituto Musicale and left studies for piano and a Salve regina.