Giacomo Antonio Monzino
Duetto per due chitarre
edited by Giacomo Sciommeri

(Instrumental Music, 10)

Giacomo Antonio Monzino (1776-1854) was a guitarist, composer, and publisher from Milan, the eldest son of Antonio Monzino, a major string instrument manufacturer and seller in town around 1800. Giacomo was a performer and a teacher, as well as a guitar music publisher. As a composer, his output includes ca. 40 pieces, mostly printed between 1807 and 1813 by Giovanni Ricordi, Giovanni Re, the Garegnani brothers, and himself. He mostly wrote for solo guitar, apart from a few duets for guitar and violin or flute, cavatinas from operas for voice and guitar, arrangements of symphonies, and a Metodo per chitarra o Lira e principi elementari di musica, Opus 18. This scholarly edition deals with one of Monzino's rare guitar duets. The Duetto comes from a unicum—manuscript 5964 from the Compagnoni-Marefoschi collection, Casanatense Library, Rome. Such source was prepared for Don Pacifico Bernetti, an amateur guitarist, then prefect of the Fermo Cathedral music chapel.

Giacomo Sciommeri got his master's degree in Musicology and Musical Heritage, and his PhD in Cultural Heritage and Territory at the Tor Vergata University, Rome. His main research focus is on Italian chamber cantata. He is an Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica committee member, the secretary of the Centro Studi sulla Cantata Italiana, and a coordinator of the "Clori. Archivio della cantata italiana" international project. He is Teaching Assistant of Music History and Adjunct Professor of Master MIDA at the Tor Vergata University, Rome. He studied guitar under Domenico Ascione.