Antonio Montanari

Antonio Maria Montanari (29 November 1676 in Modena – 2 April 1737 in Rome) was an Italian violinist and composer of the Baroque period.

Nothing is known of Antonio Maria Montanari's childhood or his musical education but he was already in Rome as a young man, and between 1692 and 1737 documentation exists (albeit with interruptions) indicating his involvement as a violinist, often in important positions, in the orchestra of Cardinal Ottoboni. From 1712 onwards he appears to have held a permanent post in the Ottoboni household but he also served other families of the Roman nobility, and he is thus found among the musicians who performed in George Frederic Handel's La Resurrezione in 1708 in the Palazzo Ruspoli. On this occasion, and on others documented from 1694 onwards, he is referred to as ‘Antonio del sig.r card.le Colonna’, which suggests that he had already been in the service of Cardinal Giovanni Paolo Colonna for some time. Between 1695 and 1708 he was in the service of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili and of the Accademia del Disegno di S Luca.

Montanari must have had considerable standing as a violinist, his name always appearing near the top of the lists of players. His reputation was such that Johann Georg Pisendel, who had already studied with Giuseppe Torelli and Antonio Vivaldi, took lessons from him in 1717. In his op. 5 trio sonatas of 1707 Giuseppe Valentini entitled one work La Montanari. He also dedicated a sonnet to Montanari in his collection of Rime, and another sonata by him entitled La Montanari exists in Dresden.

The most important single source of biographical information on Antonio Maria Montanari is a commemorative seven-line paragraph squeezed in at the foot of a lightly caricatural pen sketch of the composer by the famous artist Pier Leone Ghezzi:

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