Domenico Brescia

Domenico Brescia (28 April 1866 – 1939) was an Italian composer who taught in Chile and Ecuador, then became known in the United States for writing chamber music as well as musical accompaniment for dramatic performances. Brescia led the Music Theory department at Mills College. Brescia influenced two students who would later make names for themselves in Ecuadorian contemporary music: Segundo Luis Moreno and Luis H. Salgado. Ecuadorian Indian moods were used in two musical numbers. Brescia wrote in the notes to the score that he thought it was the first time that a chromatic set of cowbells, spanning an octave and a half, had been used as a symphony instrument. Brescia brought Marcelli into the Bohemian Club where Marcelli wrote the music for the next year’s Grove Play. In 1921, Brescia’s Dithyrambic Suite for woodwind quintet premiered at Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s Berkshire Chamber Music Festival, with the performance featuring flautist Georges Barrère. Reviewer Carl H. Tollefsen commented on the name Dithyrambic, writing “After hearing the music and in order to link my recollections of it with the title, I decided that the words ‘Did he ramble’ would bring back both. I’ll say