Ventura, Angelo Benedetto

(b c1781; d 1856). Inventor, composer and teacher. He worked in London from at least 1813 and taught Princess Augusta Charlotte from that year until her death in 1817. This opportunity, and an early partnership with Edward Light, enabled him to create and market eight harp-lute-guitar hybrids, for which he gave lessons and published simple song arrangements and 16- or 32-bar compositions, mostly in binary form.

His most important invention was the ‘Harp Ventura’, patented in 1828, a 17–19-string harp-lute, measuring about 83 × 33 × 13 cm, and apparently tuned diatonically from e to b', with three notes on the fingerboard: c'', c''' and a'''. This was perhaps the most flexible harp-lute for song accompaniments with awkward modulations, or in unusual keys. Its seven pushstops (later levers) raised the open strings by a semitone, using forks similar to Erard's fourchettes of the 1780s. An attractively decorated example (see illustration) is displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no.248).

Ventura's other inventions were the single-fingerboard 12-string Imperial ottavino, measuring 66 × 30 × 13 cm; the 13- or 14-string Imperial harp-lute (first announced in 1814); three lyre guitars (the ‘Imperyal’ lyre and ‘Ventura’ lyre, both with 12 strings, and the nine-string ‘New British Ventura’); and two guitars (the venturini, a seven-string, easily modulated guitar patented in 1828, and the venturine, a small – 51 × 16 cm – four-string guitar). All appear to have been intended mainly for such elegant ladies as those to whom his compositions are liberally dedicated.

WORKS

all published in London

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. le D. de Pontécoulant: Organographie: essai sur la facture instrumentale, art, industrie et commerce, ii (Paris, 1861/R)

R.B. Armstrong: Musical Instruments, ii (Edinburgh, 1908)

S. Bonner: Angelo Benedetto Ventura (Harlow, 1971)

STEPHEN BONNER