Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Ariosti, Attilio

Ariosti, Attilio. This master, was born about 1660, at Bologna, and intended for the priest-hood. But he had, in early youth, such a passion for music, that, defeating all the intentions of his family, he devoted his whole time to the study of it, and, in spite of all remonstrances, determined to make it his profession. He was known in Germany much earlier than in England, having composed. "La Festa d'Imenei," and "Atis," at Brandenburg, in 1700, where he was appointed chapel-master to the electrice. But before he quitted Italy we find his name en-rolled among the opera composers at Bologna and Venice ; in the first city he set an act of Apostolo Zeno's "Daphne," in 1696 ; and in the second the opera of Erifile, "La Gloria delta Poesia e della Musica." Here he is called Padre Attilio Ariosti, Servita Bolognese; and it is believed that he had been regularly initiated as a Dominican friar, but that, by a dispensation from the pope, he had been excepted from the rule of his order, and permitted to exercise a secular profession. In 1706, he composed "Nabucodonosor," an oratorio, for Vienna ; and in the same year, the opera called "La pia gloriosa Fatica d'Ercole," for his native city, Bologna. 1708, we find him again at Vienna, when he set to music the opera of "Amor tra Nemici" His first arrival in England was in the year 1716, where, it appears by the "London Courant," that at the sixth representation of Handel's "Amadis," July 12, he performed a new symphony on the viole d'amour, an instrument unknown in England till that time. We hear no more of him till the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music in 1721, when he composed the opera of "Ciro," or "Odio ed Amore," the first act of "Musio Scevola," and afterwards "Caius Marcius Coriolanus," and "Vespasiano." Respecting the opera of "Music Scevola," we should mention that the directors chose to divide the task of setting it to music among their three composers ; assigning to Attilio the first act, Bononcini the second, and Handel the third. This opera has been thought to form an epoch in Handel's life ; as it has been concluded, though without sufficient proof; that the partition of the same drama among the three composers was a premeditated plan, to try their several abilities and determine preeminence. But it seems to have been thus distributed merely for greater despatch, without meaning it as a final competition. The same expedient has been frequently practised in Italy, for variety as well as expedition, when two or three great masters have been in the city ; and nothing was deter-mined in consequence of this concurrence in London. When Ariosti was at Berlin, he gave Handel (then a child) lessons on the harpsichord, holding him, it is said, for hours together on his knees.