Matteo Carcassi

Matteo Carcassi (8 April 1792 – 16 January 1853) was an Italian guitarist, teacher and composer. Biography Carcassi was born in Florence, Italy, and first studied the piano, but learned guitar when still a child. He quickly gained a reputation as a virtuoso concert guitarist before the age of twenty. By 1815, he had settled in Paris, where he earned his living as a teacher of both the piano and the guitar. On a concert tour in Germany in 1819, he met his friend Jean-Antoine Meissonnier for the first time. Also a well-known guitarist, Meissonnier published many of Carcassi’s works in his Paris publishing house. For Meissonnier, he also arranged a number of popular songs for guitar that were originally written for piano, including works by Théodore Labarre and Loïsa Puget. From 1820 onward, Carcassi spent the majority of his time in Paris. In 1823, he performed an extremely successful series of concerts in London that earned him great fame, both as a performing artist and as a teacher. However, in Paris, a long time passed before his talents were truly recognized, partly because of the presence of Ferdinando Carulli. Carcassi was in Germany again during the autumn of 1824. Afterwards