Chamber Music without Piano
BA 10511
Edited by
MARTINA GREMPLER
and
DANIELA MACCHIONE
Critical edition of the music by
PHILIP GOSSETT
DANIELA MACCHIONE
PATRICIA B. BRAUNER
BÄRENREITER-VERLAG 2007
CONTENTS
Andante, e Tema con Variazioni
(flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon)
La Notte, Temporale, Preghiera, Caccia
(2 flutes, clarinet, violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello)
Aria variata per il Violino
(violin)
Andante e Tema con Variazioni per Arpa e Violino
(harp, violin)
Serenata
(flute, oboe, English horn, violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello )
Duetto per Violoncello e Contrabbasso
(violoncello, double bass)
Andantino et Allegro brillante pour Harpe
(harp)
This volume of Works of Gioachino Rossini includes the
seven compositions of chamber music without pianoforte currently known. The
autographs of four of these pieces have been identified: Andante, e Tema
con Variazioni; La Notte, Temporale, Preghiera, Caccia; Duetto
per Violoncello e Contrabbasso; Andantino et Allegro brillante pour Harpe.
The music of the remaining three pieces is known through secondary sources:
the only source of the Aria variata per il Violino is a contemporary
manuscript copy; the Andante e Tema con Variazioni per Arpa e Violino
was published in the early nineteenth century; and the nineteenth-century sources
of the Serenata (manuscript and printed) all derive from a single manuscript
written out by the music critic Peter Lichtenthal.
The Andante e Tema con Variazioni per Arpa e Violino, the Serenata,
and the Andante, e Tema con Variazioni, were published in the Quaderni
rossiniani in the late 1950s. The Duetto per Violoncello e Contrabbasso
and the Andantino et Allegro brillante pour Harpe were also published
quite recently for the first time, in 1967 and 1978 respectively. La Notte,
Temporale, Preghiera, Caccia and Aria variata per il Violino are
published here for the first time.
For details about each work, follow the link:
Andante, e Tema con Variazioni
La Notte, Temporale, Preghiera, Caccia
Aria variata per il Violino
Andante e Tema con Variazioni per Arpa e Violino
Serenata
Duetto per Violoncello e Contrabbasso
Andantino et Allegro brillante pour Harpe
Andante, e Tema con Variazioni (edited by Philip Gossett)
(flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon)
Rossini dedicated the autograph score (now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France) to his friend "Tonola," a businessman whose name appears in the Rossini correspondence as a guest and recipient of gifts from 1816 to at least 1844. Although a manuscript copy now in Pesaro was signed later in Rossini's life and dated "Bologna 1812," it is likely that the composer's memory was faulty, for he seems not to have passed any time in Bologna during that year. Nevertheless, other compositions which give prominent roles to wind instruments do come from the period of his studies in Bologna, including the Variazione a più strumenti obbligati, Variazioni per clarinetto (both 1809) and Concerto a Piano-Forte con Accompagnamento di Fagotto (ca. 1807).
The Andante, e Tema con Variazioni, as the title implies, is bipartite: an introductory Andante and an Allegretto. “Variations” refers both to the formal structure and to the technique of instrumental elaboration. The Allegretto in particular is divided into regular sections of eight repeated measures in which the melody is given in turn to each instrument, accompanied by the others. Always recognizable, the melodic line is varied according to the idiomatic characteristics of the instrument.
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La Notte, Temporale, Preghiera, Caccia (edited by Philip
Gossett)
(The Night, Storm, Prayer, Hunt)
The autograph, whose small size (roughly 7 5/8 by 5 1/2 inches) and green satin ribbon ties show it to have been conceived as a musical offering, was authenticated in Brussels in 1904 by Alfred Wotquenne. The manuscript was offered at auction in 1918 and again in 1974 in the United States, where it still forms part of a private collection. What occurred between its composition and 1904 remains completely shrouded in mystery. Its notation and style would seem to place it early in Rossini's career, around 1812-1813.
In this septet for two flutes, clarinet, and strings (henceforth referred to as La Notte), the clarinet has a predominant role. The dialogue develops principally among the clarinet, the two flutes, and the first violin, with the second violin, viola, and violoncello relegated to a compact chordal support, to doubling, and sometimes to brief, simple accompanimental formulas. The idiomatic writing for clarinet features passages with high and low notes and, particularly in the Preghiera, a singing quality, where the instrument is used across almost its entire range. The entrance of the clarinet in the Preghiera resembles the opening of the introductory solo for the same instrument in the Recitative and Aria Giocondo from Act II of La pietra del paragone (composed in 1812). The relationship between this opera and La Notte is also structural: in La pietra del paragone, following an order slightly different from that of La Notte, the lyric intimacy of the Aria Giocondo actually follows an orchestral storm which breaks out in the midst of a hunt. This dramatic narrative unit is a literary topos often found in music of the period. The most significant instrumental example is probably the Scherzo, Temporale, and Finale of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Like the symphony, La Notte is a pastoral composition with descriptive titles and with the stylistic conventions of gestures and instrumental idioms that were consolidated in the eighteenth century and absorbed by Rossini into a personal style.
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Aria variata per il Violino (edited by Daniela Macchione)
This composition, which represents an unicum in Rossini’s production as a type and in its instrumentation (variations on a non-original theme for solo violin), is known only through a manuscript copy held in the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. According to the title page of the manuscript, the Aria variata was composed “A Bergamo L’anno 1814 [in Bergamo in the year 1814].” In June 1814 Rossini seems to have vacationed at Merate, half-way between Como and Bergamo, and it is likely that he also paid a visit to Bergamo, where the city’s two theaters had an especially strong connection with musical life in nearby Milan.The full name of the “Nobil Sig.r Gaetano [an inkblot obscures the surname],” dedicatee and/or recipient of the manuscript copy, for whose use the Aria variata seems to have been composed, might have clarified the circumstances of its composition. It is very likely that the dedicatee was one of those noble dilettantes who cultivated the art of music for pure pleasure. In fact, the Aria variata belongs to the virtuosic instrumental genre par excellence: a famous theme, followed by bravura variations.
The theme for the seven variations derives from the ballet Il noce di Benevento by Franz Xaver Süßmayr, performed for the first time at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna in 1802 and revived with great success at La Scala in April 1812. The melody of the contraddanza in the witches’ sabbath of the first ensemble number of the ballet became wildly popular. Niccolò Paganini used it for his Le Streghe (The Witches) for violin and orchestra, op. 8, which he performed for the first time in Milan, 15 December 1813, when Rossini was also in the city. Rossini's version of the theme is itself a variant of the melody employed by Paganini.
Each variation of the Aria variata has its own character and focuses on a specific technical aspect, in increasing order of difficulty. The titles are typical of standard variation sets, such as “Minore,” “Tempo di Minuetto,” “Adagio Cantabile.” In the degree of independence between left hand and bow and by the use of high positions, extensions, arpeggiated chords, playing on one string, successions of thirds, and, in bowing, rapid picchettato, legato, blows alla corda, and their combinations, all technical performing elements present in modest doses and never for long passages, the Aria variata per il Violino belongs to the traditional eighteenth-century Italian violin school, still dominant in the second decade of the nineteenth century.
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Andante e Tema con Variazioni per Arpa e Violino (edited by Philip Gossett)
The Andante e Tema con Variazioni for harp and violin was issued by the Neapolitan publisher Giuseppe Girard, probably in 1822. The title page of the edition carries a dedication to "Signora Carolina Barbaja / da Gioacchino Rossini / Napoli.” Carolina Barbaja was the daughter of the impresario Domenico Barbaja. We do not know for what occasion the Andante e Tema con Variazioni was composed, but it probably comes from the years between the summer of 1819 (when Carolina married) and the spring of 1822, when Rossini left Naples on his way to Vienna with other singers from the Neapolitan company. It is possible that the composition was Rossini’s farewell to Barbaja’s daughter. Presumably Carolina, like other educated women of the period, knew how to play the harp. The title, in which the harp precedes the violin, seems to suggest that instrument's priority, even though in the composition the harp is actually primarily accompanimental.
The Andante e Tema con Variazioni is based on “Di tanti palpiti,” the cabaletta of the original cavatina for the hero in Tancredi. That Rossini used a melody drawn from one of his own operas for an instrumental composition may be unique. The only other known example, variations for clarinet and orchestra on the cabaletta of Malcom’s cavatina in La donna del lago, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1824, is of questionable authenticity.
After an introduction (Adagio, 3/4), the theme (Andante, 2/4) is stated by the violin in the same key as the original, F major. Rossini used the melody of the first twelve measures of the cabaletta (on the words from “Di tanti palpiti” to “mi rivedrai, ti rivedrò).” Three variations follow, the first two in major and the third in minor. In this last, Rossini unexpectedly introduced the motive of “deliri, sospiri,” repeating it at length before returning to the theme and final cadences. The type of variation is ornamental, with the identity of the theme never obscured.
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Serenata (edited by Philip Gossett)
The manuscript used by the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel for its 1828 editions of this septet for flute, oboe, English horn, and strings was sent to them from Milan by their agent Peter Lichtenthal. Born in 1780 in what is now Bratislava and resident in Milan from 1810 until his death in 1853, Lichtenthal was for many years the Italian correspondent for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung; he was a good amateur performer on the viola and a composer. The manuscript of the Serenata that Lichtenthal sent to Leipzig, probably the autograph or a copy derived from it, was kept in a Breitkopf archive that was destroyed in World War II; a copy in the hand of Lichtenthal himself, however, is found in the Milan Conservatory. From this copy a second manuscript was derived, datable to the second half of the nineteenth century, that in 1919 was acquired by the New York Public Library. Both manuscripts declare the composition was dedicated by Rossini to "his friend Vincenzo Bianchi" in Paris, 1823. Rossini’s first visit to Paris was from 9 November to 7 December 1823. He was already famous, and his activities in Paris were widely reported by the newspapers. There is no mention in these accounts of a Vincenzo Bianchi. A violinist of that name was a student of Paganini who later had a notable career as a virtuoso. However, there is no evidence that he was actually in Paris in 1823, nor does anything testify to a friendship with Rossini.
The Serenata was described at the time of its publication as "An artistic miniature [...]. After a short introduction, there follows a quite Rossinian theme, which is then varied, each time in a way appropriate to the instrument, first by the violin, then the oboe, now the flute, afterward the English horn, and finally the violoncello, whose variation concludes with a rousing cadence for all the instruments. It is relatively simple to play."
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Duetto per Violoncello e Contrabbasso (edited by Philip Gossett)
The Duetto was composed in London during the summer of 1824 near the end of Rossini’s English season. Among the most important people in the musical life of that city was Domenico Dragonetti (1763–1843), known as “Il Paganini del contrabbasso" [the Paganini of the double bass]. He was the first international virtuoso on the double bass, soloist in the orchestra of the King’s Theatre, and composer of instrumental and vocal music. During Rossini's visit to London he worked several times with Dragonetti, not only at the King’s Theatre but also in private concerts that Rossini directed and accompanied.
The autograph of the Duetto (in the Paul Sacher Institute of Basel) bears the dedication, “Rossini / Al Suo Amico Salomons" [Rossini to his friend Salomons] and is dated London, 20 July 1824; it has a bookplate of “Philip Joseph Salomons,” a pupil of Dragonetti. The autograph is kept together with the performing parts in Domenico Dragonetti’s hand. There are no documents concerning the first performances of the piece, which most probably took place in the home of Philip Joseph Salomons. Since Dragonetti often performed on the violoncello as well, it is possible that he played that instrument while his pupil Salomons played the double bass. The Duetto was written for two fine performers, and Rossini undoubtedly used his collaboration with virtuosos of the first order to improve his technical knowledge of individual instruments.
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Andantino et Allegro brillante pour Harpe (edited by Patricia B. Brauner)
The autograph manuscript of the Andantino et Allegro brillante (owned by the Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh) was dedicated to "Cécile" in Bordeaux on 14 May 1832. Between February and October of that year, cholera claimed around twenty thousand victims in Paris. To escape the epidemic, Rossini took a trip to the south of France. During the trip the composer kept up a continual correspondence with Paris and with his father Giuseppe; among the letters is one to a Madame de la Tour de Saint-Ygest in Bordeaux, which city he had left "almost furtively" before 8 June of that year. We cannot rule out the possibility that she is the “Cécile” of the dedication, but no other information has been found about the woman.
The Andantino et Allegro brillante consists of an introduction (Andantino) and a tripartite Allegro, which is a quick march for solo harp. In France, more than in Italy, the harp was the instrument most often found in the homes of well-to-do families, unfailingly present in salons and theater orchestras. The use of the harp was widespread not only in fantasies on operatic themes and prayers, but also in triumphal hymns and military marches, a practice that goes back at least to the Napoleonic wars. The first melody of the Allegro seems to be the first appearance of melodic material subsequently used by Rossini in one of a group of three military marches printed numerous times in the 1830s by various publishers, with differences in the ordering, the keys, and the dedicatees. The history of the three marches will be discussed in the forthcoming volume of music for military band, edited by Denise Gallo in Works of Gioachino Rossini (BA 10502).
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