From the evidence of his music, he was probably a friend of the Florentine poet Franco Sacchetti, and must have done the bulk of his composing between 1360 and 1375, since those are the outside dates known for the poems he set.

One of his compositions, La fiera testa, was likely written against the Visconti family when Florence was at war with Milan between 1397 and 1400; Niccolò may have been in Perugia then.

A total of 41 compositions of Niccolò have survived with reliable attribution, the majority of them in the Squarcialupi Codex, and all the others from sources in Tuscany.

The madrigals are all for two voices, except for one which uses three, and all are in a relatively conservative style, uninfluenced by contemporary French practice (thereby differing from the similar works of Landini).

These pieces are very short, consisting of a single moralizing line of text, much different from the amorous love poetry set by other contemporary composers such as Landini.