Ariosti, Attilio

, a celebrated musical performer and composer in the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, was a native of Bologna, and was diverted from the concerns of the church, to which his parents had intended to educate him, by an early passion for music. He became an opera-composer at Bologna and Venice, and, passing into Germany, was made maestro di capella to the electoral princess of Brandenburgh, for whom he had composed the opera of “Attis.” Both there and in Italy he continued in high estimation as a composer, and as a performer on the violincello, and particularly on the viol d’amore, which he either invented, or brought into notice. In 1716 he visited England, and performed on this instrument, which was a novelty in this country, but went again abroad until 1720, when, at the establishment of the Hoyai Academy of Music, he was invited to return, and was employed to compose several operas. Handel and Bononcini were his contemporaries. After some stay in this country, during which he probably dissipated what he got, he was obliged to publish a book of cantatas by subscription, and then he left England, The place and date of his death are not known.²