Luigi Boccherini born in Lucca Italy 1743 into a family of musicians, Boccherini studied the Cello under his father. At thirteen he was sent to Rome, while a journey to Milan to visit Sammartini, and three stays in Vienna, all before the age of twenty-one, put the seal on his reputation as a virtuoso and saw his debut as a composer of six quartets with obbligato parts were published in 1760.

After a fruitless attempt to establish himself in his native town, he led the wandering life of a virtuoso until he settled in Spain in 1769. Here he worked for various patrons, but in the unsettled conditions of that country during the Napoleonic wars, he failed to gain lasting or secure employment and died in Madrid in 1805 in great hardship.

Apart from his celebrated minuet, the name of Boccherini fell into oblivion until comparatively recently, but now the riches of his chamber music are becoming known to an ever growing public. To his contempories, Boccherini in 1760, was the first and foremost a virtioso cellist who had assimilated the technical innovations of the violin school of Corelli and Tatini and had developed and applied them to the Cello. In 1765, he formed a quartet in Milan, together with Nardini,Manfordi and Cambini. Boccherini's influence was two-fold, on a virtuosi like the Duport brothers, Romberg and Viotti, and on the composition of chamber music by writing obbligato parts for each instrument.

He himself wrote an enormous amount of chamber music, twenty-seven sonatas for cello and six for piano and violin, forty-two trios, ninety-seven quartets, 176 quintets (113 for two cellos), and seven nocturnes for wind ensembles.