Bocchenni was born in the Italian town of Lucca into a family of talented artists and musicians. His father, a double-bass player, was impressed with his young son's abilities as a cellist. He sent him at the age of 13 to study in Rome with the Maestro di Cappella at St Peter's, and later accompanied him to the Royal Court in Vienna -the first of three visits before Boecherini was 21. In 1764 Boecherini visited the composer and organist Giovanni Battista Sammartini in Milan, and the same year returned to Lucca to play in the Theatre Orchestra. He composed intensively and formed a string quartet, one of whose members was his friend Filippo Manfredi. In 1766 he set off on a concert tour with Manfredi, and visited much of northern Italy before arriving in Fans in 1767. Here an outstandingly favourable reception at the Concert Spintuel gave Boecherini the opportunity to publish quartets, trios, and sonatas for keyboard and violin.
 

The eighteenth century was the era of technical virtuosity; what Corelli and his followers had done for the violin, Boecherini proceeded to do for the cello, with a series of ten cello concertos that stretched players' abilities to the full. Most of these are thought to have been written before he settled in Madrid in 1769 to concentrate on chamber music. The invitation to visit Spam came from the Spanish ambassador to Pans; Bocchenni soon became a composer at the Spanish court. Here he wrote a large amount of music suitable for court performance, mostly quartets and quintets.

This post was followed by a spell at the court of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, but after Wilhelm's death Bocchenni returned to Spam and from 1800 he organized concerts and composed for Lucien Buonaparte, Napoleon's brother. Boccherini's popularity was such at one stage that his publisher m Paris issued quartets by other composers under Boccherini's name. Nevertheless, Boecherini died in poverty in Madrid in 1805.
 

Bocchenni wrote 18 symphonies, but his lyrical gifts show themselves most strongly in his 300 chamber works. He composed 93 string quintets, with two cellos in place of the customary cello and double-bass contributing a vibrant and sensuous bass line. Nine guitar quintets also form a part of his chamber output, in which darting accents lend a bright and nervous freshness to music of exceptional clarity. Already endowed with plenty of Italian elegance and brio, the young man discovered in Vienna the beginnings of Romantic passion: the spirit of Sturm und Drang that adds so much drama to middle-period Haydn. His discovery of Spanish dance rhythms and the elaborate guitar music of Andalusia resulted in a distinctive and individual style that won the admiration of Gluck, as well as influencing Mozart and Haydn.