1. Preludio a Orchestra

This Preludio a Orchestra is Puccini’s only known orchestral composition dating from his student years in Lucca. Since it only survives in the fair copy (1.B.1), dated August 1876, it seems that the then seventeen-year-old Puccini prepared it for a performance. However, it is unlikely that such a performance took place. There is no trace of it in the Luccan newspapers of that year nor in the years following. Whereas, on several occasions, the Lucca press mentioned Puccini’s Mottetto (see 2), composed shortly after the Preludio a Orchestra.
In the 1930s, the German musicologist Karl Gustav Fellerer reported on this composition, which he apparently had seen among the possessions of Puccini’s son Antonio. Later, the manuscript was evidently owned by Natale Gallini, who described it in detail in 1959. After Gallini’s death (1983), his collection of Puccini autographs was widely scattered, and it was only in 1999 that the city of Lucca was able to acquire the manuscript of the Preludio a Orchestra from an anonymous private owner, thereby making it publicly accessible.
In the literature, this composition frequently has been confused with the Preludio Sinfonico in A major (see 32), which dates from Puccini’s years as a student in Milan.