Doni, Giovanni Battista
Doni, Giovanni Battista
Doni, Giovanni Battista, Italian music theorist;b. 1594; d. Florence, Dec. 1, 1647. He studied literature and philosophy at Bologna and Rome, and from 1613 to 1618 was a law student at Bourges, France. He took his degree at Pisa. In 1621 he accompanied Cardinal Corsini to Paris, where he zealously pursued his literary and antiquarian studies. He went to Rome in 1622 at the invitation of Cardinal Barberini, who was passionately fond of music, and with whom he traveled. In the intervals of his profound study of ancient music, he found time to construct the “Lira Barberina,” or “Amphichord,” a species of double lyre that he dedicated to Pope Urban VIII. Recalled to Florence in 1640 by deaths in his family, he settled there, married the next year, and accepted a professorship of elocution offered him by the Grand Duke. His criticism and discussions of the earliest operas are very valuable, and were publ. for the first time by A. Solerti in Origini del melodramma. Testimonianze dei contemporanei (Turin, 1903).
Writings
Compendia del trattato de’ generi e de’ modi della musica (Rome, 1635); Annotazioni on the above (Rome, 1640); De praestantia musicae veteris libri ires (Florence, 1647).
Bibliography
A. Blandini, Commentarium de vita et scriptis G.B. D. (Florence, 1755); F. Vatielli, La lira barberina di G.B. D. (Pesaro, 1909).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire