GIOVANNI

PAOLO

See also:

• COLONNA
• GIOVANNI PAOLO COLONNA (circa 1637—1695)
• COLONNA, VITTORIA (1490-1547)

COLONNA (circa 1637—1695)  , Italian musician, was born in Bologna about 1637 and died in the same city on the 28th of November 1695 . He was a pupil of Filippuzzi in Bologna, and of Abbatini and Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of organist at S . Apollinare . A dated poem in praise of his music shows that he began to distinguish himself as a composer in 1659 . In that year he was chosen organist at S . Petronio in Bologna, where on the 1st of November 1674 he was made chapel-piaster . He also became president of the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna . Most of Colonna's works are for the church, including settings of the psalms for three, four, five and eight voices, and several masses and motets . He also composed an opera, under the title Amilcare, and an oratorio, La Profezia d' Eliseo . The emperor Leopold I. received a copy of every composition of Colonna, so that the imperial library in Vienna possesses upwards of 83 church compositions by him . Colonna's style is for the most part dignified, but is not free from the inequalities of style and taste almost unavoidable at a period when church musicwas in a state of transition, and had hardly learnt to combine the gravity of the old style with the brilliance of the new .