Lelio Colista (13 January 1629,

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

– 13 October 1680, Rome) was an Italian Baroque composer, lutenist, and guitarist.Michael Tilmouth, entry on Lelio Colista in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980 Funded by his father, who held an important position in the

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, Colista early received an excellent musical education, probably at the ''Seminario Romano''. He mastered several instruments, especially the lute,

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

, and

theorbo The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending ...

. Already at the age of 30, he held a lucrative post of ''custode delle pittore'' at the papal chapel. In the decade that followed (the 1660s) he was ''maestro di cappella'' at the

titular church In the Catholic Church, a titular church is a church in Rome that is assigned to a member of the clergy who is created a cardinal. These are Catholic churches in the city, within the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Rome, that serve as honorary des ...

in Rome

San Marcello al Corso San Marcello al Corso, a church in Rome, Italy, is a titular church whose cardinal-protector normally holds the (intermediary) rank of cardinal-priest. The church, dedicated to Pope Marcellus I (d. AD 309), is located just inset from Via de ...

; two oratorios he wrote for San Marcello in 1661 and 1667 are now lost. In 1664, along with

Bernardo Pasquini Bernardo Pasquini (Massa e Cozzile, 7 December 1637Rome, 21 November 1710) was an Italian composer of operas, oratorios, cantatas and keyboard music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player in his day, he was one of the most important Italian composer ...

, he was part of the entourage of 200 that accompanied Cardinal Flavio Chigi on a diplomatic mission to the court of

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, ...

. During the last 20 years of his life, he was a composer and teacher in Rome who was in demand. He was the guitar teacher of

Gaspar Sanz Francisco Bartolomé Sanz Celma (April 4, 1640 (baptized) – 1710), better known as Gaspar Sanz, was a Spanish composer, guitarist, and priest born to a wealthy family in Calanda in the comarca of Bajo Aragón, Spain. He studied music, theolog ...

. In 1675 he became a member of the Arciconfraternita delle Sacre Stimatte in Rome. He wrote mostly instrumental music, and, though no pieces were published during his lifetime, his influence on the musicians residing in Rome and England was significant. Colista influenced Corelli's and Purcell's trio sonatas through his early ''da chiesa'' sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, which the composer described as ''symphonies''.

Arcangelo Corelli Arcangelo Corelli (, also , , ; 17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of th ...

mentioned Colista in the preface to his Opus 1 as one of the ''più professori musici di Roma''. Michael Tilmouth calls Colista "undoubtedly the most important of the Italian models for Henry Purcell's trio sonatas", "not only in terms of overall structure but also in the use of the term 'canzona' and in the nature and treatment, both contrapuntally and in regard to rhythmic modification of their thematic material." Colista's music was admired both by the audience and the patrons. In 1650, he was described as ''vere Romanae urbis Orpheus'' (truly the Orpheus of the city of Rome) by Jesuit scholar

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fe ...

. His works are usually referred to by the thematic catalogue by Antonella D'Ovidio, denoted WK.

References and further reading

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Colista, Lelio 1629 births 1680 deaths Italian male classical composers Italian Baroque composers Italian lutenists Musicians from Rome 17th-century Italian composers 17th-century male musicians