Composer and cellist Luigi Boccherini was born on this day in
1743 in Lucca, Italy. The son of a professional double bass
player, the genial, sentimental Boccherini studied in Rome as a
youth and returned to his native Lucca as a virtuoso cellist. He
made his first major impression as a teen composer traveling
around Europe with his father and the violinist Filippo
Manfredi, playing well-received concerts of Boccherini's two-
part sonatas and reaching Paris in 1768. There the ambassador
from Spain invited Boccherini to become a chamber composer in
the court of the Infante Luis, the brother of Charles III, in
Madrid. Despite the ambassador's promises, Boccherini's 1770
reception in Madrid was not as grand as the receptions he had
been receiving around Europe; nonetheless, Boccherini admired
the fact that several members of the royal court were
accomplished string musicians and he settled gratefully under
Luis' patronage, adopting Madrid as his home -- a city on the
far fringes of the European music scene. As th