Robert Valentine

Robert Valentine (c. 1671 – 26 May 1747), also known as Roberto Valentini and Roberto Valentino, was an English composer, recorder player, oboist and violinist, who moved to Rome and became a citizen of the Papal States. He is noted for his large number of compositions for the recorder.

Biography Born c. 1671, he was baptized in Leicester on 16 January 1674. He was the son of Thomas Follentine or Follintine, who lived in Leicester from c. 1670 and worked as a town musician there accompanied by his elder sons Thomas and Henry. The family became a prominent one in the musical life of Leicester; descendants included John Valentine, who was the grandson of Robert's eldest brother Thomas, and John Valentine's daughter Ann Valentine.

Robert Valentine seems to have spent little if any of his adult life in England before moving to the Papal States, where he became known by the Italian versions of his name. He settled in Rome and took a Roman wife, marrying Giulia Bellatti in September 1701 in the parish of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte. They had nine children, although only three of these survived their parents.

He died in the same Roman parish on 26 May 1747, only 12 days after the death of his wife, and not back in England at some other date, as was formerly thought. Valentine's prominence was recorded by John Hawkins in 1776 in his General History of the Science and Practice of Music: