edited by Mariateresa Dellaborra (Instrumental Music, 6)
1 January 2025
In addition to marking Viotti’s editorial debut, the six quartets Op. 1 offer an interesting example of the quatuor concertant, a genre widely cultivated in late eighteenth-century Paris—as the many printed editions attest—and much appreciated by amateur audiences. By creating an appealing blend of galant stylistic traits and pre-Romantic tendencies, and by displaying surprising inventiveness and melodic variety within harmonic contexts that are never predictable, Viotti gives concrete form to the idea of the quartet as a drawing-room concerto, alternating the style of pleasant conversation with solo passages of considerable virtuoso complexity.
Mariateresa Dellaborra’s research focuses primarily on Italian music between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has published books and essays with Olschki, ETS, Brepols, L’epos, LIM, Ut Orpheus, Rugginenti and Marsilio; contributed numerous entries to The New Grove (2nd edition) and MGG; and edited critical editions of instrumental works (N. Paganini, G. B. Viotti, A. Rolla, S. Mercadante) and operas (G. B. Sammartini, N. Traetta, N. Jommelli, M. Portugal da Fonseca, A. Stradella). She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Arcadia (Milan) and of the governing board of the Società Italiana di Musicologia, where she is responsible for the Society’s editions. She is also part of the ITMI working group (Indici della Trattatistica Musicale Italiana), at the Fondazione Franceschini in Florence.
