s best known today for his horn concertos, which Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon suggests (in The Mozart Companion) may have been a model for Mozart's four horn concerti.
also known for writing the Requiem (1776) which was played at a memorial for Mozart in December 1791.
difficulty in attributing some music to Rosetti, since there were a couple of other composers with similar names at the same time, including Franciscus Xaverius Antonius Rössler
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) encouraged Berlioz (1803–1869) to write Harold en Italie.
. Paganini had acquired a superb viola, a Stradivarius — "But I have no suitable music. Would you like to write a solo for viola? You are the only one I can trust for this task."
I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron’s Childe-Harold." That he had recycled some of the material from his discarded concert overture, Rob Roy, went unmentioned.
The first movement ("Harold aux montagnes") refers to the scenes that Harold, the melancholic character, encounters in mountains. In the second movement ("Marche des pélerins"), Harold accompanies a group of pilgrims.
The third movement ("Sérénade") involves a love scene; someone plays a serenade for his mistress. In the fourth movement, ("Orgie de brigands"), spiritually tired and depressed