The Rocklopedia Fakebandica now has a podcast.
Listen now!
Paolo Gambara
Unsuccessful Italian composer living in Paris from Balzac's novella Gambara, first published in 1837. He's supported by his devoted wife Marianna.
He also invents a Panharmonicon.
"I was born in Cremona of an instrument maker, a good performer, but a stronger composer," said the musician. I was therefore able early to know the laws of musical construction, in its double material and spiritual expression, and to make curious children remarks which later on were represented in the mind of the made man. The French drove me and my father out of our house. We were ruined by the war. From the age of ten, I began the wandering life to which almost all the men who have driven in their head innovations of art, science or politics were condemned. The fate or dispositions of their minds, which do not correspond to the compartments in which the bourgeois are held, lead them providentially to the points where they ought to receive their teachings. Solicited by my passion for music, I went from theater to theater all over Italy, living only a little, as we live there. Sometimes I played bass in an orchestra, sometimes I was on stage in the choir, or under the theater with the machinists. I studied music in all its effects, questioning the instrument and the human voice, wondering how they differ, how they agree, listening to the scores and applying the laws that my father taught me. I often traveled by mending instruments."
