Il “Capriccio o Studio” in Do maggiore per fortepiano di Luigi Cherubini: un capolavoro o un esperimento accantonato?

Cherubini composed the Capriccio in C major in 1789 in Paris but never published it. This very particular piano composition is one of his few piano works, that received little attention from musicological literature. The Capriccio is an extraordinarily long composition, articulated in several sections that present closed form or free phantasy-like structures. It is not entirely comparable with the parallel genre of the fantasia because of its length and complex articulation; moreover, it presents some stylistic traits of the old XVII century Italian contrapuntal capriccio, particularly of Frescobaldi. This paper discusses the previous contradictory assessments and tries to collocate it in its stylistic context.