Giovanni Paolo Colonna

Giovanni Paolo Colonna (16 June 1637 – 28 November 1695) was an Italian composer, teacher, organist and organ builder. In addition to being chapel-master and organist of San Petronio Basilica in Bologna, he served prominent members of the courts of Ferrara, Parma, Modena and Florence. He was a founder-member and president of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. Emperor Leopold I collected manuscripts of his sacred music, which reflects the Roman church cantata style of Giacomo Carissimi and looks forward to the manner of George Frideric Handel. Biography Colonna was born on 16 June 1637 in Bologna (at the time, the second largest city of the Papal States after Rome), the third of four brothers in a family of five children, son of Antonio Colonna (c. 1600–1666), a well-known organ builder, and his wife, Francesca Dinarelli. Colonna’s father, nicknamed Dal Corno, was the adopted son of Stefano Colonna, a member of a large and successful family of organ-builders which had been active in central-northern Italy since the previous century. He was a pupil of Agostino Filippuzzi in Bologna, and of Antonio Maria Abbatini and Orazio Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of org