Carlo Farina

(b Mantua, c1604; d Vienna, 1639). Italian violinist and composer. His Mantuan origins are referred to on the title pages of his five published books.

Nothing is known of his musical education, but if he was the son of Luigi Farina of Casalmaggiore, Cremona, a ‘sonatore di viola’ who was known to have been in Mantua, in the service of the Gonzagas, at the beginning of the 17th century and to have married there in 1603 and taken Mantuan citizenship in 1606, he probably received his early musical training from his father. Mantua at that time was a particularly productive and stimulating environment for a young violinist, what with the presence of the virtuoso violinist Salamone Rossi and the important musical legacy of Claudio Monteverdi. Farina soon became very well known as a violinist, and in 1625 he was appointed Konzertmeister of the court of the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg I, in Dresden, working directly under Heinrich Schütz. From 1625 to 1628 his name appears in connection with the most important activities at the Saxon court, including the festivities for the wedding of the elector’s daughter Sophia Eleonora and the Landgrave Georg II of Henssen-Darmstadt (Torgau, spring 1627). Farina played a leading role both in the music for the wedding banquet and in the performance of Schütz’s Dafne, composed for the occasion. A brief reference to these events can be found in the eighth galliard of Il terzo libro delle pavane … (1627), which the composer recalls as having been played and sung on that occasion to a eulogistic text, in all likelihood now lost. The straitened circumstances of the Dresden court, resulting from the Thirty Years War, meant that Farina’s work there was interrupted in 1628; the following year he was replaced by the Mantuan violinist Francesco Castelli. After returning to Italy, Farina was engaged in the autumn of 1631 as a violinist in the chapel of Madonna della Steccata, Parma, but he did not remain there after 1632. In September 1635 he took part in the musical celebrations for the feast of S Croce in Lucca, probably as first violin, and at the end of that year he left Italy permanently. He moved again to northern Europe, first to Danzig, where he played in the municipal orchestra between 1636 and 1637, and then, from 1638, to Vienna, where he was in the service of the Empress Eleonora I. He remained there until his death in 1639, probably at the end of July.