Luigi Boccherini: geography of a European musician (on the bicentenary of his death)

During the last two centuries a lot of Myths became fossilized in the prospective of Luigi Boccherini (Lucca 1743 - Madrid 1805). The private and musical route of this Tuscan artist tick the beginning of the European instrumental music evolution.

The different travels of Boccherini to Prussia (composer at service of FrÈdÈric Guillaume II), France and Spain made of him an unique and isolated artist or rather an inspired composer who played a central role in the music of his period?

At this question a lot of researches have been done hoping to give a definitely answer. During the last years a lot of researches gave a contribution to the collapse of the Myths above. For example the Spanish musicology denied the legend of the musician "poverty" and at the same time it defined in a more suitable way the so called "no centrality" of the Iberian musical milieu. At the same time, extensive analyses are showing that the characteristics of Boccherini's musical language, far from representing a gap in comparison with the consolidated style of Vienna, constitute the advanced breaking line.

The project would run on different activities fixing a general objective that is to take part at a new definition of instrumental classicism. All this will be realized thanks to Boccherini's life and musical work collection.

Exactly the project aims at conceptualizing Boccherini's work in its historical contest, to provide a new definition of the artistic role of the musician in the symphonic repertory of instrumental classicism.

In order to achieve its objectives, the project intends implementing a range of activities grouped under three main headings as "Research", "Diffusion" and "Documentation". Through these three phases will be operated a collect of historical information (provided by the main sites visited by Boccherini as Italy, France, Germany and finally Spain), conversion of the collected documentation to microfilm support and a range of didactic conferences and concert performances to diffuse Boccherini's work.

The project is the result of two main factors: on one hand, the artist's death bi-century commemoration and, on another hand, an emergency statement (the need of precise information regarding the actual influence of Boccherini's work in the XVIII century's music). Following these two main statements, a research project cumulated with a studies comparative analysis (national studies from Italy, France, Germany and Spain) will provide from one part a new frame for the analysis of Boccherini's personality and work and in another part new sources of information to check the actual role played by Boccherini in the instrumental classical music and its influence on the classical movement in general.

The classical movement constitutes the basis of an European culture common inheritance and it is nowadays an European universal language.