Giuseppe Nicolini
Quintet for two French horns, English horn, violin, and cello
ed. by Mariateresa Dellaborra
(Instrumental Music, 1)

XXII, 32 pp.; 1 ill.; 5 parti: 10, 5, 5, 5, 7 p.; 29,7 x 21 cm
Introduction and Apparatus in Italian and English

This work by Piacenza-born Giuseppe Nicolini (1762-1842) forms an unicum not only in his catalog, but also in its times. Nicolini was better known and appreciated as an opera composer, but left a significant body of instrumental music. Some was written for teaching purposes and yields to period drawing-room taste; some was intended as a virtuoso display for professional players. The Quintet, probably composed by 1800, has come to us in a single manuscript, now at the Paganini Conservatory Library, Genoa. It is in four movements (Without tempo marking; Polacca, Allegretto; Largo; Rondò, Allegretto) and its well-balanced writing showcases a challenging English horn part, perhaps intended for a clever virtuoso.

Mariateresa Dellaborra teaches Music History at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali “Franco Vittadini”, Pavia. An authority on 18th- and 19th-century Italian music, she published books and essays for Olschki, Ets, Brepols, L’Epos, Lim, Ut Orpheus, Rugginenti, and Marsilio, wrote entries for The New Grove (2nd edition) and MGG, and edited instrumental compositions by Niccolò Paganini, Giovanni Battista Viotti, Alessandro Rolla, and Saverio Mercadante, as well as operas by Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Tommaso Traetta, Niccolò Jommelli, Marcos Portugal, and Alessandro Stradella. A board member of Arcadia Foundation, Milan, she coordinates the Monumenti Musicali Italiani section at SIdM, and participates in the ITMI (Indici della Trattatistica Musicale Italiana) working group, Franceschini Foundation, Florence.