The cello pieces of Cervetto formed after the manner of Tartini’s violin sonatas are, as to their contents, quite antiquated, and are only interesting in a purely technical point of view. Like the compositions already considered, they occupy mostly the parts of tenor and bass. Only twice in the first Allegro of the tenth Sonata of his Op. 4 does Cervetto venture to the twice-lined E, and at the conclusion of the same piece to the twice-lined A. In both cases he has to use the treble clef, which does not appear elsewhere.
Besides Cervetto the younger, amongst Italians who cultivated cello playing must be mentioned Gasparini, Moria, Joannini di Violoncello, Zappa, Cirri, Aliprandi, Graziani, Piarelli, Spotorni I. and II., Barni, Bertoja I. and II., Lolli, Sandonati, and Shevioni. We give below the meagre information which exists regarding them.
Quirino Gasparini, a distinguished cellist, was in 1749 Kapellmeister at the Court of Turin. He remained there until 1770. As a composer, he was chiefly occupied with church music, no cello pieces are known by him.
Of Moria, the fact only is known that, in 1755, he was heard at the “Concert Spirtuel” in Paris.
Joannini di Violoncello, from the year 1759 Kapellmeister at St. Petersburg, had a great reputation in his own country as a player.
Zappa, called Francesco, according to Gerber was making a concert tour in 1781, and “enchanted his hearers in Dantsic by his soft and delightful execution.”
Giambattista Cirri, born in the first half of the eighteenth century, at Forli, lived and worked for a long time in England. On the title page of his first work, published at Verona in 1763, he called himself a “Professore di Violoncello.” Of his compositions there appeared in print seventeen different works in London, Paris, and Florence.
As a clever violoncellist, Bernardo Aliprandi, son of the opera composer, Aliprandi, born in Tuscany, was distinguished. His father was composer and Court band-conductor in Munich during the first half of the previous century; but he himself became a member of the orchestra there, where he still was in 1786. His cello pieces, of which several were published, are as obsolete as those of Cirri.
Gerber, in his dictionary, says of Graziani, that after the death of the gamba player, Louis Christian Hesse,[70] he was summoned to Potsdam to take his place as tutor to the Crown Prince of Prussia. When the French violoncellist, Duport (the elder), came to Berlin, in 1773, Graziani lost his post at Court. He died at Potsdam in 1787. The six violoncello solos, Op. 1 (printed in Berlin about the year 1780), as well as the six cello pieces brought out in Paris (Op. 2), mentioned by Gerber in his old Musical Dictionary under the name of Graziani, must have appeared in the latter years of the author’s life.