Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni

Biography

Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (28 January 1757 – 6 August 1821) was an Italian violinist, composer and conductor. Bruni was born and died in Cuneo, Italy. During most of his life, he resided, played and composed in Paris.

At the height of the French 'terror', c.1791, Bruni authored Un Inventaire sous la terreur which lists musical instruments recovered from noble households. This inventory was published by J. Gallay, editor (Paris: Georges Chamerot, 1890). In the scholarly work The Hurdy-Gurdy in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert E. Green (Indiana University Press, 1995), where the Bruni text is footnoted, Green says of Bruni's inventory "from 111 noble households (it) lists six which possessed vielles (hurdy-gurdies)." p. 17. In the fictional novel The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason this affair is again referred to thus: "A Temporary Commission of Arts was set up and ... Bruni ... was named Director of the Inventory. For fourteen months he collected the instruments of the condemned. In all, over three hundred were gathered, and each carries its own tragic tale." Mason goes on to say that 64 were pianofortes.

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