A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Rovelli

ROVELLI. A family of eminent Italian musicians. Giovanni Battista was first violin in the orchestra of the church of S. Maria Maggiore of Bergamo, at the beginning of this century. Giuseppe, his son, was a cellist, born at Bergamo in 1753, and died at Parma, Nov. 12, 1806. Of Alessandro we only know that he was at one time director of the orchestra at Weimar, and that he was the father of Pietro, who was born at Bergamo, Feb. 6, 1793, and received his first lessons, both in violin-playing and the general science of music, from his grandfather. By an influential patron he was sent to Paris to study under R. Kreutzer, and his playing attracted much attention there. On his father's appointment to Weimar he joined him for a time. At the end of 1814 we find him at Munich, playing with great applause. He remained there for some years, and was made 'Royal Bavarian chamber-musician,' and 'first concerto-player.' In Feb. 1817 he was playing at Vienna; there he married Micheline, daughter of E. A. Forster, and a fine PF.-player, and in 1819 went on to Bergamo, took the place once occupied by his grandfather, and seems to have remained there, suffering much from bad health, till his death, Sept. 8, 1838. The writer in the Allg. mus. Zeitung for Dec. 26, 1838, from whom the above facts have been mainly taken, characterises his play as 'simple, expressive, graceful, noble; in a word, classical—a style which takes instant possession of the heart of the hearer.' In other notices in the same periodical, he is said to have inherited the pure, singing, expressive style of Viotti, and practised it to perfection. Molique was his pupil at Munich.

[ G. ]