Nephew of Gaetano Besozzi,[1] he was employed in the orchestra of the Elector of Dresden and travelled extensively throughout Europe with his father, playing in London, Paris, Stuttgart and Salzburg, where he received good notices from Leopold Mozart.
From 1754 Carlo Besozzi joined his father as oboist in the Dresden Kapelle,[4] in the service of the Electress of Saxony Maria Antonia Walpurgis.
[n 1][5] 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.
He then traveled extensively through Germany, France and Italy, acquiring by that time not only almost unparalleled skill on the oboe, but also even greater reputation than his father, and spent 1758–9 playing under Niccolò Jommelli in Stuttgart.
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.