First page of The Overture to The Exile, located in the Freedman Collection.
Mazzinghi lived from 1765 to 1844, a remarkably long life for someone of this period, partly enabled by personal and familial wealth. At various points, his contemporaries would have included the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Chopin. While Mazzinghi would live through the early years of the Romantic movement, his compositional style would remain firmly rooted in Classical models. Mazzinghi was a galant composer, focusing nearly exclusively on simple rhythms, diatonic harmony, and singable melodies.
This simplicity of style is not universally effective in Mazzinghi’s compositional output. While he was highly competent in adapting or imitating other composers’ music, his compositions were largely unremarkable. As noted by Roger Fiske in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Mazzinghi’s operatic music was slight, fashionably tuneful, but harmonically bland.
Though Mazzinghi’s work is almost entirely unknown to modern audiences, he was a prolific composer in his day. His work for the pianoforte was particularly noteworthy, in which he composed seventy to eighty sonatas and over 200 airs. In addition to his impressive pianoforte catalog, Mazzinghi composed eleven operas, over thirty-five vocal trios, and nearly two dozen ballets.