V/1
Chamber Music • Musica strumentale da camera
Critical Edition by
GUNDULA KREUZER
The University of Chicago Press, 2009
CONTENTS
PIANO PIECES / PEZZI PER PIANOFORTE
Romance sans paroles (1844)
[A Florimo] (1858)
Valzer (1859?)
QUARTETTO (1873)
This volume contains the only known instrumental works of Verdi's artistic
maturity. Once he became Italy's pre-eminent opera composer, he wrote few non-vocal
works, most notably the Quartetto-his simple title for the String
Quartet in E minor. It was the only instrumental composition he consented
to have published during his lifetime. As Verdi admitted, he composed the Quartetto
"simply to pass the time" during months of enforced idleness in Naples
in early 1873, when rehearsals for the local premiere of Aida were delayed.
Although on 1 April 1873 he had it performed at his hotel for a few friends,
he originally wanted to keep the work private. But following its 1876 public
premiere in Paris with the celebrated violinist Camillo Sivori, organized by
the French publisher Escudier, Verdi was finally persuaded to allow it to appear
in print. Published nearly simultaneously in September 1876 by Ricordi in Italy,
Escudier in France, and Schott in Germany, the Quartetto soon became
well known all over Europe and the United States. Though today several recordings
are available and the piece is regularly programmed, all of these performances
use later editions that do not live up to the composer's intentions. In contrast,
the critical edition of the Quartetto is based on his autograph score,
preserved at the Naples Conservatory library, as well as contemporary manuscript
parts, early editions, and Verdi's own instructions for performance.
The volume's three piano pieces all originated as gifts for admirers. Verdi
wrote the "Romance sans paroles" in November 1844, shortly after the
premiere in Rome of his opera I due Foscari, dedicating it to a patroness,
Princess Teresa Torlonia (née Colonna). A salon piece typical of its
time, the "Romance" appeared twenty years later, in 1865, in an unauthorized
"private" edition, for subscribers to an Italian music journal. Since
1932 several modern editions have been published. The album leaf that Verdi
penned in April 1858 for his friend, the Neapolitan librarian and archivist
Francesco Florimo, is a brief study in counterpoint showing a notably high level
of dissonance. No doubt a deliberate gesture toward Florimo's profession and
their mutual interest in older Italian polyphonic music, it has never before
been published. Probably best known today is the "Valzer," which the
Italian director Luchino Visconti acquired in the 1950s and used in a version
orchestrated by Nino Rota for the ballroom scene of his celebrated 1963 film
"Il gattopardo" (The Leopard). The occasion for which Verdi wrote
the "Valzer" is unknown, but internal evidence suggests that it originated
around the time of Un ballo in maschera (1859). His indication "Cembalo"
at the beginning and the restricted range of the piece suggest that it was written
for the type of piano still found in private homes of the period. Two editions
of the "Valzer" (for piano) were issued in the 1980s. The critical
edition of all three piano pieces is based on the composer's autograph manuscripts,
two of them still in private hands.