Giovanni Paolo Colonna

Giovanni Paolo Colonna (16 June 1637 – 28 November 1695) was an Italian composer, teacher, organist and organ builder. In addition to being chapel-master and organist of San Petronio Basilica in Bologna, he served prominent members of the courts of Ferrara, Parma, Modena and Florence. He was a founder-member and president of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. Emperor Leopold I collected manuscripts of his sacred music, which reflects the Roman church cantata style of Giacomo Carissimi and looks forward to the manner of George Frideric Handel.

Colonna was born on 16 June 1637 in Bologna (at the time, the second largest city of the Papal States after Rome), the third of four brothers in a family of five children, son of Antonio Colonna (c. 1600–1666), a well-known organ builder, and his wife, Francesca Dinarelli. Colonna's father, nicknamed Dal Corno, was the adopted son of Stefano Colonna, a member of a large and successful family of organ-builders which had been active in central-northern Italy since the previous century. Born in Salò, near Brescia around the turn of the century, Antonio may have moved with his stepfather Stefano to Bologna by 1615.

Colonna received a full training both in the family profession of organ building and in musicianship. He was a pupil of Agostino Filippuzzi in Bologna, and of Antonio Maria Abbatini and Orazio Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of organist at S. Apollinare. A poem in praise of his music shows that he began to distinguish himself as a composer in 1659. In that year he was appointed organist at S. Petronio in Bologna, where on 1 November 1674 he was made chapel-master.

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