Carissimi was called on by Bernardino Castorio in Rome to fill the post of maestro at the German College there.

During the 1650s he composed and conducted for the Oratorio del S. Crocifisso.

He composed hundreds of motets and cantatas in addition to Masses and other sacred works. Among the oratorios are "Damnatorum lamentatio", "Jephte", "Jonas", and "Judicium Salomonis".

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Cesti, Marc Antonio
1623 - 69
Italian composer working in Venice, Rome and Vienna. Reputedly wrote over hundred operas of which 15 are extant.

Cesti was born in Arezzo. After joining the Franciscan order, he was sent to Florence , then back to Arezzo.

His first opera, "Orontea", performed in Venice in 1649, was a sensational success.

In 1652 he was appointed Chor-Kapellmeister at the Innsbruck court of Archbishop Ferdinand Karl. In 1665, Cesti went to Vienna, where his "Il Tito" was staged.

The culmination of his career as an opera composer was in his last opera for Vienna, "Il pomo d'oro", a pinnacle of Baroque opera on the gigantic scale. Other works include the operas "La Dori", "Nettunno e Flora festeggianti", and "La Semirami"; and over sixty cantatas.

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Corelli, Arcangelo
1653 - 1713



Italian composer and violinist whose 12 'Concerti Grossi' established the concerto grosso form. He was called the "World's First Great Violinist," and the "Father of the Concerto Grosso."

Corelli occupied a leading position in the musical life of Rome for some thirty years, performing as a violinist and directing performances often on occasions of the greatest public importance. Among his many students was the famed Antonio Vivaldi.

The Trio Sonata, an instrumental composition generally demanding the services of four players reading from three part-books, assumed enormous importance in baroque music, developing from its earlier beginnings at the start of the seventeenth century to a late flowering in the work of Handel, Vivaldi, J. S. Bach and their contemporaries.

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