Gioachino Rossini

It was toward the end of this hectic phase that Rossini composed his marvelous comedic masterpiece The Barber of Seville, based on the first book of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais' trilogy of Figaro plays.* Rossini undertook the task  knowing full well that the first book had already been set to music by three previous composers Friedrich Ludwig Benda (1776), Giovanni Paisiello (1782) and Nicolas Isouard (1796). In fact, Paisiello's rendition had achieved in the thirty years since its creation an almost sacred status, so much so that the very mention that Rossini planned to treat the subject anew created a firestorm among the musical intelligentsia. Followers of Paisiello organized protests against Rossini's efforts - abetted by the elderly Paisiello himself - that culminated in an opening night fiasco for the composer and his work.

In 1815 following the success of his opera Elizabeth, Queen of England, Rossini contracted with the manager of the Teatro Argentina in Rome to provide two works to be premiered at the theater within the year. The first of these operas, Torvaldo e Dorliska, proved to be a failure, lasting only for the three scheduled performances in December 1815. Undeterred, Rossini began immediately to work on the second of his contracted operas. He and his librettist Cesare Sterbini sequestered themselves in Rossini's Rome apartment and worked day and night to complete the score for Il barbiere. They proceeded rapidly, and the premiere took place at the Teatro Argentina the evening of February 20, 1816, with the composer conducting from the piano.

Giovanni Paisiello

Rossini attempted to temper some of the antagonism of the Paisiello crowd by naming his opera after one of the other main characters - Almaviva, or the Useless Precaution - yet to no avail. The theater was packed with Paisiello fanatics who proceeded to disrupt the performance from its beginning. And the audience had much to jeer since the first act was a comedy of errors worthy of an opera buffo in its own right. The tenor had persuaded a reluctant Rossini to substitute a rustic guitar serenade for a soprano aria. When the tenor entered to perform the serenade, he discovered the guitar had not been tuned properly. He then stopped the performance while he tuned the instrument. The audience whistled and jeered and stamped the floor as the pause lengthened. During the serenade, a string broke on the guitar; the tenor stopped the show again while he restrung the guitar. Again, the audience became boisterous. The act continued without incident - except intermittent jeering and whistling - until the closing minutes of the first act. A stray cat wandered onto the stage, prompting the singers to chase the cat around the set and among the curtains, all to the derisive cries and mewlings of an aroused audience. When the act mercifully came to a conclusion, Rossini stood up from the piano and roundly applauded the cast for making it through the ordeal. Then, in a act of contempt, he turned to the audience and clapped, as if praising the excellence of their whistling and outrageous conduct. It was a bad move on Rossini's part, for the audience began to whistle and stamp and jeer and taunt throughout the second act, so much so that few notes of music could be heard.

Following the performance, Rossini left the theater immediately, without joining the cast for the traditional opening night party. The singers, hoping to raise the composer's spirits, went to his apartment where they found him fast asleep. Rossini excised the guitar serenade and restored the soprano aria; the second performance was much better received by the public. By the end of the week, the opera was a smashing success. While Paisiello's Barber has faded into near obscurity, Rossini's effort is still considered one of the great operatic masterpieces, ranking consistently as a top draw for opera houses around the globe.

The Barber of Seville Overture, long a concert hall favorite, has nothing whatsoever to do with the opera proper. Not a tune, not a theme, not a aria from the opera is indicated in the overture, for a simple reason. Rossini composed the overture for another of his works and he used it twice to open stage works prior to Barber, specifically for Aureliano in Palmira (1813) and Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra (1815). Whether an original overture was lost or whether he lacked time to compose one, Rossini may have reused this popular piece for its effervescent spirit so typical of the opera itself.

 

Georges Bizet

Georges Alexandre-César-Léopold Bizet (1838-1875), composer of Carmen, was a child of Paris, the city in which he was born and from which he seldom left. His father Adolphe was a singer and an unschooled composer and his mother Aimée was the sister of the noted singing teacher François Delsarte. Like the other composers on tonight's program, he showed remarkable talent at a very early age. In 1848 shortly before his tenth birthday, Bizet enrolled in the Paris Conservatory of Music where he studied with Pierre Zimmerman (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by Charles Gounod, his son-in-law), Antoine François Marmontel (piano), François Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmerman's death, Fromental Halévy, whose daughter - Geneviève - Bizet later married. Young Bizet displayed a particular fondness for the organ, and a strong aptitude for composition. He won first prizes, for example, in 1855, both for organ and for fugue. This is also the year in which he wrote, possibly as a student assignment, his Symphony in C major, which lay unperformed in the Conservatory library until it was discovered in 1933. It was premiered in 1935 and was recognized at once as a minor masterpiece, and has since entered the mainstream repertoire, often performed and recorded.

Bizet continued to make progress, and in 1857 he won the Prix de Rome for music, a prize that required him to study in Rome for three years and to produce one work per year. In the Eternal City, he continued the work of perfecting his craft as he composed an opera buffa Don Procopio and his solitary religious work, a Te Deum, a work that remained unpublished until 1971. In addition, he made several attempts to write another symphony, but, according to accounts, he destroyed the manuscripts before returning to Paris in December 1859. His Rome sojourn was only extended period he was away from his home city.

On his return trip to Paris, Bizet took a tour through the Italian countryside to visit several cities to gather material for a proposed symphony, each of the four movements of which would represent a major Italian city - Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. He completed one movement of the symphony by 1861, but not until 1866 did he have a complete version. Never fully satisfied with the work, it, too, lay unp;ublished until 1880, several years after the composer's death. The Roma Symphony, as it is called, is performed occasionally, but it has never had the popularity of his youthful Symphony in C major.

During the decade of the 1860's, Bizet made headway in establishing himself as a force in Parisian music circles. While The Pearl Fishers (1863) and La jolie fille de Perth (1867) were not particularly successful, they did mark him as an up-and-coming composer with a bright future. He undertook other chores, such as arranging two of Ambroise Thomas's operas for piano. In June 1869, he married the daughter of his former teacher, but at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July of 1870, he and his wife were forced to flee Paris to a neighboring community, thus interrupting his work for a considerable period.

By 1871, when he composed Jeux d'Enfants, he had gained employment consistent with his rising status as a noteworthy composer. He served until his death as a member of the Conservatory examination committees for composition, counterpoint and fugue, and for piano and harp.

Jeux d'Enfants (Petite Suite) is a small, frothy composition in five movements Bizet culled from his twelve-movement piano duet of the same name. The orchestral suite has achieved great popularity in spite of its miniature nature. The suite was first performed in 1880, after the composer's death. The first movement ("Trumpeter and Drummer"), with its crescendo and decrescendo with trumpets and drums describes the approach and gradual disappearance of a troop of soldiers. The second movement ("The Doll") is a dainty, gentle little melody for the muted strings with responses in the woodwinds over a berceuse accompaniment in the cellos, also muted. The third movement ("The Top") is an imitation of the spinning of that toy, its whirling depicted in the violins, accompanied by a dance melody played first by the woodwinds and second by the strings pizzicato. The fourth movement ("Little Husband, Little Wife") is a subdued domestic dialogue between the first violins ("Husband") and cellos ("Wife"). The last movement ("The Ball") brings this charming suite to a conclusion with a dance by full orchestra.

Richard Georg Strauss (1864-1949) composed two horn concertos, both in E-flat major, both for his father, and separated in writing by sixty years. The first concerto was dedicated to his father, and the second concerto was dedicated to the memory of his father. The first concerto followed the Mendelssohn-Schumann early Romantic style that was almost passé; the second was written in the Wagner-Liszt lush Romantic fashion that was fast dying out. The first style he did not advance; the later style he carried to its logical extreme.

Richard Strauss

Strauss was the son of the principal horn player for the Munich Court Orchestra, Franz Joseph Strauss, who was something of a composer and accomplished at the guitar and clarinet as well as the French horn. Strauss the elder was widely esteemed in the German music world for the impeccable technique and glorious sound he displayed on the French horn. He was a particular favorite of Richard Wagner - whose works Strauss despised - who reportedly said, "Strauss is a detestable fellow, but when he plays the horn you can't be angry with him." Despite the lack of regard one for the other, Wagner insisted that Strauss be the lead horn in his Bayreuth Orchestra. Conservative in his music tastes, Strauss the elder steered his precocious son toward the abstract music of the Mendelssohn and Schumann school.

Young Strauss showed his talent very early - at age five he began piano lessons with August Tombo, harpist of the Munich Court Orchestra, and at six he completed his first composition under the supervision of his father, Schneiderpolka (Tailor’s Polka). At age seven, he began violin studies with Benno Walter, leader of the court orchestra. Only when he was eleven did he begin to take composition lessons from someone other than his father, another member of the Munich orchestra, Friedrich Wilhelm Mayer. Within two years, he had scored his first orchestral piece, Serenade in G major, and embarked upon an extended period of composition that included a string quartet, a symphony in D major and his first published opus, Festive March. By age seventeen, Strauss had earned the praise of noted conductor Hans von Bülow. Following the premiere of Strauss's Serenade in E-flat for Thirteen Wind Instruments, Bülow decreed that Strauss was "by far the most striking personality since Brahms."

During his maturation period, Strauss also took up conducting at which he proved quite adept. He progressed to such a degree that by his twenty-first birthday, Bülow took him own as assistant conductor at Meiningen, after he succeeded in tryouts against such competitors as Gustav Mahler and Felix Weingartner. While at Meiningen, Strauss came under the strong influence of violinist and composer Alexander Ritter who turned him to an appreciation of Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt, a turn that eventually led to Strauss's abandonment of his musical ideology to that point.

It was with this background that young Strauss undertook to write his Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 11. He began the composition task in 1883 and the premiere took place at Meiningen in 1886 with Bülow as the conductor. Although Strauss was inclined to follow his father's taste in music, he, nevertheless, was fascinated with Wagner's forceful and colorful use of brass instruments in his orchestrations. Naturally, his father was of immense assistance in helping his son to recognize the range and tone of the horn, as well as to utilize the technical "tricks of the trade." Aside from the assured orchestration, it is the breath markings for the soloist that distinguish this concerto as the work of a mature composer. For this, Strauss was indebted to his father. While the work exhibits some of the characteristics of Strauss's later music, expecially in the fanfare that begins the piece, it is from the clarity and simplicity of the Early Romantic school that the piece draws its inspiration.

 

Felix Mendelssohn - 1821

Following the French occupation of his native Hamburg, Abraham Mendelssohn, son of the noted Jewish scholar and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, moved his family to Berlin in 1812, in part because he saw a greater opportunity in Berlin as a banker, and in part because he wanted to give his gifted children a more cosmopolitan upbringing. The move proved to be quite an auspicious one for young Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), for his new surroundings put him in contact not only with the intellectual elite of the German states but with that of Europe as well. In time, the Mendelssohn family converted to Lutheranism, were baptized and became part of mainstream German culture. At the same time, Abraham added the surname Bartholdy (bar-TOL-dee) to the family name to honor a relative who had died and left the Mendelssohns a small fortune. Felix often went by his original surname, but at his father's urging, he used the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy hyphenation in most formal situations.

Of the four Mendelssohn children, the two oldest, Fanny and Felix, were the most musically inclined, but as the two aged, the greater attention became focused on Felix. Fanny, extremely talented in her own right, suffered the fate of many gifted women of the time who were expected to prepare themselves for the role of the good wife and not the role of a professional. She was instrumental in Felix's success, however, serving as his most devoted confidant and advocate throughout their short lives.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

In Berlin, Mendelssohn entered the Singakadamie and came under the tutelage of Carl Friedrich Zelter who looked upon the young man as the reincarnation of Mozart. He tutored Felix in piano and conducting and encouraged him to compose, and compose he did, turning out sophisticated compositions including two works he completed toward the end of his teen years that put him forward as a mature composer with a promising future. The two works, String Octet in E-flat major (1825) and Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, gave Mendelssohn the credentials he needed to propel his reputation as a serious composer and led to his broader European acceptance. This broader acceptance and the push by Abraham for his son to experience the wider world led to Mendelssohn's first European tour.

Mendelssohn left on his grand tour in the spring of 1829 with the acclaim of his countrymen ringing in his ears, for he had successfully resurrected Johann Sebastian Bach and his St. Matthew Passion by editing Bach's score and conducting it in a heavily redacted form for it's first hearing in nearly eighty years. For a lad of barely twenty years, Mendelssohn had received a good deal of fame and recognition unusual for his age, but it was a recognition that he had earned through his talent and his tireless energy.

Carl Friedrich Zelter

Arriving in England in April 1829, Mendelssohn set immediately to work, for this tour was no vacation but a working tour to learn and to bolster his own reputation. He organized concerts as both conductor and performer and sought out the learned citizens of London. One concert was given over to him conducting his own works, including his Symphony No. 1 in C minor; another concert offered him as piano soloist in the first English performance of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. (He amazed the audience by playing the piece without score, totally from memory.) And, as if his regular schedule were not enough, he organized and performed in a benefit concert to aid the survivors of a flood in Greece. In addition, he assisted the noted German pianist-composer Ignaz Moscheles, a friend and a former student of Beethoven, in copying and editing some of Moscheles' piano scores. In late spring, Mendelssohn announced in a letter to his mentor Carl Zelter that he would take a walking tour of Scotland after the concert season. In return, Zelter requested of the composer that he fetch home with him a compilation of Scottish folk music for Zelter's use.

In mid-July, Mendelssohn and his traveling companion Karl Klingemann, a friend and an attaché at the German embassy in London, took boat to Edinburgh. The two travelers had scheduled a meeting with Sir Walter Scott, whose novels had done so much to romanticize Scotland, but the meeting went badly because Scott was uncommunicative and eager to leave on a vacation himself. It lasted all of thirty minutes. Then Mendelssohn and Klingemann set out overland to take in the rustic countryside, the landmarks, and the castles that figure so dominantly in Scott's literature. As they went, Mendelssohn, a very capable artist, made drawings of the sights he encountered. A particular castle that captured his imagination was the one at Holyrood, the home of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mendelssohn recorded the deep impression this historic place made upon him, especially Holyrood Chapel, which lay in ruins behind the palace:

The chapel...is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and moldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I today found in that old chapel the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony.

The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel

Here, amid the historic ruins of Holyrood Chapel, Mendelssohn scribbled the opening sixteen bars of his Symphony No. 3. The inspiration may have been immediate and deeply felt, but the impulse to compose the 'Scottish' symphony lay dormant for more than a dozen years. Not until 1842 was the work completed and made ready for publication. It proved to be the last of his symphonies,** and it is considered by many critics and admirers to be his finest in that form.

By the middle of August, Mendelssohn and Klingemann had made their way to Wales. It is from here in a letter home that Mendelssohn delivered his famous broadside against folk music (national airs):

No national music for me! Ten thousand devils take all nationality! Now I am in Wales, [where] a harper sits in the hall of every so-called inn, constantly playing so-called tunes, that is, the most noxious, vulgar, unmelodious trash, with a hurdy-gurdy going at the same time! It...has given me a toothache. Scotch bagpipes, Swiss cow-horns, Welsh harps all playing with horrendously improvised variations - taken together their music is beyond belief. Someone like me who cannot tolerate even Beethoven's settings of folk songs should come here and listen to them bellowed by harsh nasal voices and accompanied in the most undisciplined style and keep his temper. As I am writing this, a fellow in the hall is playing [a tune] and then he varies it as the hurdy-gurdy adds a hymn in E flat. I am mad and have to put off writing more until later.

With these facts in mind, how Scottish is Mendelssohn's 'Scottish Symphony?' Does the work contain elements that are unique to Scotland or to Scottish music? Some commentators claim to hear the "Scottish Snap" in the second movement, but that is a convention common to other nationalist music; some relate the "warlike" markings in the fourth movement to the soundings of skirling bagpipes. Others are certain that a Scottish folk music 'mood' permeates the symphony. These positions are nothing more than speculation, however. Mendelssohn, a musical purist, nowhere in the symphony quotes Scottish folk music; in fact, given his distaste for national music, it would be out of character for him to do so. The composer Robert Schumann, for one, failed to pick up any 'Scottish' overtones in the symphony when he reviewed the work; he thought he was critiquing Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony and, instead of heath and moors and bagpipes, he visualized its "beautiful Italian pictures." Another telling fact is that Mendelssohn himself did not reference the work as a 'Scottish' symphony, nor is it designated as such on the first publications of the score in its orchestral version or in the four-hand piano version transcribed by Mendelssohn himself. The appellation was added to the title after the composer's death in 1847.

One thing is certain: The motif that Mendelssohn jotted down in 1829 at the deteriorated Holyrood Chapel is the starting and ending point for his Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56. The theme begins the symphony in a somber A minor and closes the work in a triumphant A major, yet it appears in various guises throughout the four movements. This theme, pure unadulterated Mendelssohn, is the only 'Scottish' thing in this finest of his symphonies.

 

* Beaumarchais' Figaro plays are The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Guilty Mother. Mozart chose the second of the series for his tribute to Beaumarchais. The third play, La mère coupable, was finally sent to the operatic stage by the French composer Darius Milhaud in 1966. Composer John Corigliano makes references to the play in a subplot in his opera The Ghost of Versailles (1991).

** Mendelssohn's symphonies are numbered according to their publication dates, not by composition date. For example, Symphonies 4 and 5 were completed in their present forms before Symphony 3, but were not published until after the composer's death.