Pietro Terziani

Pietro Terziani (Rome, 1765 – Rome, 1831) was an Italian composer whose career ranged from the opera house to the sacred music of Roman churches. His training combined the Neapolitan school with the study of the stile antico a cappella under Giovanni Battista Casali in Rome, an influence that shaped much of his later output.

Between 1780 and the years that followed, he studied at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio in Naples with Carlo Cotumacci and Giacomo Insanguine, before returning to Rome to perfect his counterpoint. In 1784 he was admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna, presenting a four-part antiphon as his test piece, and at about the same time he joined the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he served as a director from 1797 to 1803. In his youth he composed the operas Il geloso imprudente (Rome, 1785) and Creso (Venice, 1788), as well as several oratorios. Following the French invasion of Italy, he moved to Vienna, where he remained until the end of the Napoleonic Wars; there he premiered the opera I campi d'Ivri (1805).

Back in Rome, in 1816 he was appointed maestro di cappella of St John Lateran and later of the churches of the Gesù, Sant'Ignazio di Loyola and San Silvestro. During this period he devoted himself almost entirely to sacred music, cultivating both the stile antico and the accompanied style. He was highly esteemed as a contrapuntist, although Schilling considered that his works lacked the power needed to be performed in large churches.

Numerous masses, graduals, offertories, antiphons, psalms, hymns and motets survive in libraries and archives in Italy and other countries, some of which were published. His sons Gustavo and Eugenio also devoted themselves to music; Gustavo, a pupil of his father and of Baini, died of cholera in 1837 before establishing a reputation as a composer.