Antonio Lotti

Antonio Lotti (5 January 1667 – 5 January 1740) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. Biography Lotti was born in Venice, although his father Matteo was Kapellmeister at Hanover at the time. Oral tradition says that in 1682, Lotti began studying with Lodovico Fuga and Giovanni Legrenzi, both of whom were employed at St Mark’s Basilica, Venice’s principal church, although there is no documentary evidence. Venice Lotti made his career at St Mark’s, first as an alto singer (from 1689), then as assistant to the second organist, then as second organist (from 1692), then (from 1704) as first organist, and finally (from 1736) as maestro di cappella, a position he held until his death. Because of the paucity of solid scholarship until recent decades, older reference books cite a good deal of misinformation regarding Lotti’s biography. Cicogna’s 1834 Delle inscrizioni Veneziane and Francesco Caffi’s 1854 Storia della Musica relied on oral tradition more than a century old to name works that Lotti supposedly composed for the Ospedale degl’ Incurabili. Later studies built upon that assertion to name Lotti as one of the supposed maestri of the Incurabili. The 2001 New Grove Dictionary of