A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Zambona, Stephano

by George Grove

ZAMBONA [Stephano?], apparently an Italian, resident in Bonn at the latter part of the last century, who, according to the narrative of B. J. Mäurer, cellist in the Bonn court orchestra, gave Beethoven lessons in Latin, French, Italian, and Logic for about a year. It is said that the lessons began in 1780, and that the boy advanced so rapidly as to read Cicero's letters in six weeks! Zambona was evidently a shifty, vague personage—now an innkeeper, now a book-keeper, and then again applying for the post of kammerportier about the Court; but the service which he rendered Beethoven was so far a real one, and without his lessons we should probably not have those delightful polyglott dedications and remarks which are so amusing in Beethoven's works.^[1]

[ G. ]

1. See Thayer's 'Beethoven,' i. 115.