Carlo Besozzi (1738 – 22 March 1791) was an Italian oboist and composer.
Besozzi was born in Naples, the son of the oboist and composer Antonio Besozzi (1714-1781). Carlo Besozzi joined his father in the Dresden court orchestra [1] from 1754. However, the Dresden opera house was destroyed by the Prussians in the Seven Years' War (1756–63), breaking up the remarkable group of musicians assembled by Elector Frederick Augustus II.[1] The Besozzis escaped to London in early 1757, performed in Paris in December of that year, spent 1758–9 playing under Niccolò Jommelli in Stuttgart, and may have waited out the rest of the war in Turin.[1] His father was back on the Dresden payroll by 1764, and Carlo stayed with the court until the year of his death.[2]
He composed several concertos and sonatas, most for the oboe. With his father and Johann Christian Fischer, Besozzi may have been a collaborator of the instrument-makers Grenser and Grundmann, who produced the prototypical European Classical hautboy (oboe) in Dresden around this time.[3]