Antonio Nava was born in Milan in 1775. He was one of the best known guitarist-composers working in Italy in the first decades of the Nineteenth Century. A concert performer on guitar and a teacher of voice, he was the teacher of his child Gaetano (1802-1875). His activity took him for a brief time to Paris, London and presumably Germany around 1812. His major interest, however, was composition: in 1808 he published four sonatas for solo guitar with Ricordi, bearing the title “The Seasons of the Year.” This was the first number published by the important Milanese publisher.
He wrote a series of works for solo guitar, collections for voice and guitar, and chamber music with flute, published by Ricordi from 1808 to 1826. He authored also a “Method” for guitar, with a study of the neck of the French guitar and a page illustrating the fretboard of the instrument; this method was published by Ricordi and had many reprints before the end of the Nineteenth Century.
Other Italian publishers of Nava were Monzino of Milan and the Reycend Brothers of Turin, while with the foreign publisher Breitkopf & Härtel he published some works in about 1817. He died in Milan on October 19th, 1826.
Nava is the dedicatee of the Gran Bretagna duet Op.9, for violin and guitar, by Luigi Moretti.