ABSTRACT
Lorenzo Bocchi is one of the more obscure eighteenth-century composers. He was not mentioned by Burney or Hawkins, and, so far as I know, he has never appeared in any musical dictionary, with the exception of a brief mention in Eitner. 2 In 1973 T.J. Walsh even tried to argue that Irish references to him were actually misprints for the bass singer Giuseppe Boschi. 3 Nevertheless, Bocchi did exist, and was a figure of some importance in British musical life in the 1720s. He was probably the first person to play the violoncello in Scotland and Ireland; his Musicall Entertainment for a Chamber contains the first solo violoncello music printed in Britain, as well as two late and rare examples of published solo viola da gamba music – an instrument he presumably played. He was involved in an early attempt to establish public concerts in Edinburgh, and seems to have collaborated with Allan Ramsay senior in several dramatic projects. He may even have had a hand in the process that led Ramsay to convert his pastoral play The Gentle Shepherd into a ballad opera – the first Scottish opera. He certainly made a pioneering setting of a cantata to words by Ramsay in lowland Scots. After he moved to Dublin, in 1723 or 1724, he was involved in the first regular concert series in Ireland, and played an important role in establishing music publishing there. More generally, he is the earliest known member of the Italian 62musical diaspora to establish a successful career in Edinburgh and Dublin rather than London. 4 He was followed by, among others, Francesco Barsanti, Nicolo Pasquali, Christina and Giuseppe Passerini, Pietro Urbani, Domenico and Natale Corri, Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, and Hieronymo Stabilini in Edinburgh, and Francesco Scarlatti, Carlo and Ferdinando Arrigoni, Pietro Castrucci, Francesco Geminiani, Andrea Caporale, Gian Battista Marella, Nicolo Pasquali, and Tommaso Giordani in Dublin. 5
