Review of Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli (c1699/1700–1773), ED. Michael Talbot Twelve Sonate da camera, volume 1: Sonatas 1–6: Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli (c1699/1700–1773), ED. Michael Talbot Twelve Sonate da camera, volume 1: Sonatas 1–6 Launton: Edition HH, 2011 pp. xv+89, isbn979 0 708092 30 8

Michael Talbot begins his Introduction to the first volume of Carbonelli's Twelve Sonate da camera with a brief overview of Charles Burney's and John Hawkins's accounts of the composer's life, their inaccuracies and the prominent role they played in shaping the composer's biography. That biography he then immediately begins to correct and rewrite (v). With no entry dedicated to the composer in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, outlining the biography of Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli (1699/1700–1773) is an important task, for his importance as one of London's leading violinists, if not for the good story of a Roman musician who became ‘one of the purveyors of wine to the king’ (Sir John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London: T. Payne, 1776), volume 5, 360–1). Telling fact from fiction in Carbonelli's biography is a serious challenge, if we consider that early eighteenth-century London was a place where tying one's name to Corelli's was the right thing to do whether one really was his student or had just met him once by chance. Talbot gives a rich biographical sketch – rich enough, indeed, to have made me wonder what his ‘full-length article’ in preparation (to which he refers in a footnote) will look like.