| Oboists have long lamented the fact that there is such a small nineteenth-century solo repertoire for their instrument. Most of the oboe literature of that era has fallen into obscurity, and only a few nineteenth-century pieces have entered the standard repertoire. No thorough reference for locating nineteenth-century oboe works has been available. This study has thoroughly investigated Italian literature of that time, thus filling a gap in the scholarly literature on the oboe. The author identified over 170 works for oboe and English horn by nineteenth-century Italian composers, and located, collected, and annotated the majority of them. Only a fraction of these pieces are currently in print. This resource is intended for use by oboists who are seeking new repertoire.;The study is organized in alphabetical order by the composers' names. The bibliographic records include brief biographies of the composers, the titles and instrumentations of the works, dates of composition or first performance, and the names of the publishers of both out-of-print and modern editions. Each record also lists where the manuscript is held, the length of the piece in minutes, a difficulty rating, and the dedication of the work. Incipits are provided as well as comments about the style of the pieces and circumstances of composition. All of the works are indexed by instrumentation and the opera fantasies are indexed by opera. The study is designed to give a large amount of information that would be useful for performance in concise, easy-to-read entries for each piece. |
