COLONNA, GIOVANNI PAOLO. – Son of an organ builder, born on 16 June 1637 in Bologna, where he died on 28 November 1695. He first studied in his native city with the organist Filippuzzi, and then in Rome with Carissimi, Abbatini, and Benevoli. The school he conducted in Bologna produced able musicians, among whom may be mentioned G. Bononcini, G. F. Tosi, Fr. Francesco Antonio Urio, G. C. M. Clari, G. C. Predieri, G. Silvani, etc. He
was organist at the Collegio di S. Apollinare in Rome and, in 1659, at S. Petronio, of which he became maestro di cappella on 1 November 1674. He was co-founder and first president of the Accademia filarmonica.
He wrote many oratorios: L'alloro trionfato (1672), with G. B. Vitali, l'Assalonne (1686), San Basilio (1679), La Betulia liberata (1690), La caduta di Gensalemme (1688), Giuliano (1694), La morte di s. Antonio (1676), Il Mosè legato di Dio e liberatore del popolo ebreo (1686), La Profesia di Eliseo nell'assedio di Samara (1686), Salomone amante (1679), Sansone (1677), S. Teodora (1678), Il transito di s. Giuseppe (1681), as well as masses, psalms, litanies, lamentations, motets, etc., for 1 to 8 voices, also with instruments. Some works are preserved in manuscript, others in period prints and later reprints, in the libraries of Bologna, Modena, Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Cambridge, London, etc.