John Baptist Grano

John Baptist Grano was born in London at a date after 1692 and died before 1748. His profile belongs to London's musical life in the first half of the eighteenth century, in which he combined performing, teaching and composition. Clues about his origins are indirect: the family is documented in London from 1691, Grano spoke Dutch and claimed to have associated with soldiers from childhood, which suggests that his father, also named John Baptist, was a musician in the entourage of William of Orange. His mother, of French origin, ran a haberdashery in Pall Mall with an elder daughter.

From 1710 he performed in aristocratic salons, at benefit concerts for other musicians and in theatres. He appeared on the payroll of the King's Theatre in 1712 and again in 1720, and played for George I and George II during their celebrations in the City of London, although being a Catholic prevented him from entering royal service. In 1719 he was a trumpeter in the fourth troop of the Horse Guards. He lived on private patronage, staying at country houses in England and Ireland, and in his role as a teacher he is described as a conscientious tutor. Around 1729 he was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where he kept a diary. His release, in September of that year, seems to be due to Alderman Humphrey Parsons, Master of the Grocers' Company, and other artists also helped. He was afterwards commissioned to provide music for the Lord Mayor's Day, and his absence from the festivities of 1730 leaves open the possibility that he had died or gone into exile.

His legacy is modest and partly uncertain. Some hymns, songs and flute sonatas survive, in which the lyrical opening Largo gives way to fast movements of virtuosity, and a march of his was still in use in Guards regiments at the end of the eighteenth century. His diary, published in 1998, is a rare testimony to the life of a professional musician of the period.