The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The composer Bertin, less a contemporary than a predecessor of Rossini, wrote of him in the following terms:—

"M. Rossini has a brilliant imagination, verve, originality, great fecundity; but he knows that he is not always pure and correct; and, whatever certain persons may say, purity of style is not to be disdained, and faults of syntax are never excusable. Besides, since the writers of our daily journals constitute themselves judges in music, having qualified myself by Montano, Le Délire, Aline, &c., I think I have the right to give my opinion ex professo. I give it frankly, and sign it, which is not done by certain persons who strive incognito to make and unmake reputations. All this has been suggested only by the love of art, and in the interest of M. Rossini himself. This composer is beyond contradiction the most brilliant talent that Italy has produced since Cimarosa; but one may deserve to be called celebrated without being on an equality with Mozart."

It seems afterwards to have occurred to Bertin that music as good as Rossini's might be composed by machinery. He declares, indeed, in a pamphlet directed against Rossini, entitled "La musique mechanique et de la musique philosophique," that he once asked Maelzel, the inventor of the metronome, whether he could construct a machine to compose music; upon which Maelzel daringly replied that he could, but that his mechanically-made tunes would not be up to the level of Sacchini, Cimarosa, and Mozart, and would be worthy only of Rossini.

"M. Auber has told me," says M. Jouvin, in his Life of that composer, "how he met Rossini for the first time at a dinner given by Carafa in honour of his illustrious compatriot. On rising from table the maestro, at the request of his host, went to the piano and sang Figaro's cavatina, 'Largo al fattotum della cità.'

"'I shall never forget,' said M. Auber to me, 'the effect produced by his lightning-like execution.' Rossini had a beautiful baritone voice, and he sang his music with a spirit and verve which neither Pellegrini nor Galli nor Lablache approached in the same part. As for his art as an accompanist, it was marvellous; it was not on a key-board but on an orchestra that the vertiginous hands of the pianist seemed to gallop. When he had finished I looked mechanically at the ivory keys; I fancied I could see them smoking. On arriving home I felt much inclined to throw my scores into the fire. 'It will warm them, perhaps,' I said to myself; 'besides, what is the use of composing music, if one cannot compose like Rossini?'"

Apart from a little professional jealousy, Rossini met in Paris with the warmest possible reception; and the men in authority gave him substantial marks of their esteem. He was appointed director of the Théâtre des Italiens, with a salary of 20,000 francs a year; and when after eighteen months' service he resigned this post, the salary was continued to him in connection with another, of which the duties were purely nominal: that of "Inspector of singing." In granting Rossini this salary, the object of the government was to induce him to remain in France, and to compose a series of works for the Académie where, after producing Il Viaggio a Reims, at the Italian Theatre in honour of Charles X.'s coronation, he brought out in succession Le Siège de Corinthe,[10] re-arranged from Maometto Secundo, an opera of the year 1820; Moïse, re-arranged from Mosè in Egitto, a Lenten opera oratorio of the year 1818; Le Comte Ory, re-arranged with many additions from Il Viaggio a Reims; and his greatest work Guillaume Tell.

Every one knows that after William Tell, Rossini wrote no more for the stage. But every one does not know that he for some little time afterwards entertained an idea of composing an opera on the subject of Faust. "Yes," answered Rossini, when Ferdinand Hiller questioned him on the subject, "it was for a long period a favourite notion of mine, and I had already planned the whole scenarium with Jouy; it was naturally based upon Goethe's poem. At this time, however there arose in Paris a regular 'Faust' mania; every theatre had a particular 'Faust' of its own, and this somewhat damped my ardour. Meanwhile the revolution of July had taken place; the Grand Opera, previously a royal institution, passed into the hands of a private person; my mother was dead, and my father found life in Paris unbearable because he did not understand French: so I cancelled the agreement which bound me by rights to send in four other grand operas, preferring to remain quietly in my native land, enlivening the last years of my old father's existence. I had been far away from my poor mother when she expired; this was an endless source of regret to me, and I was most apprehensive that the same thing might occur in my father's case."

Many explanations have been given of Rossini's reasons for abstaining from writing any more for the stage, when he had once produced William Tell—nor did he afterwards compose anything whatever of importance except his thoroughly beautiful Stabat Mater. Some of these explanations have been already referred to. The truth in this matter seems to have been that Rossini acted under the influence of a great variety of reasons. Without being hurt by the comparative coldness with which William Tell for a time was received, without being jealous of Meyerbeer's and of Halévy's success, which, according to some anecdote-mongers, caused him to exclaim: "Je reviendrai quand les Juifs auront fini leur Sabbat," without even having "written himself out," he may well have reflected whether such a strain as he had subjected himself to in composing William Tell was worth undergoing a second time. With the exception of Il Viaggio a Reims nothing that he wrote for Paris, until he undertook William Tell, was absolutely new. He had already lost the habit, if not the faculty, of composing rapidly; and this same Viaggio a Reims was the only original work he produced between Semiramide, 1823, and Guillaume Tell, 1829. Writing at Paris for as fine an orchestra as that of the San Carlo Theatre, and for a finer chorus, he paid particular attention to the choral and orchestral portions of his last great work. He also profited by the fact that at the Académie he was free to have as many rehearsals as he pleased; and to turn this advantage to the greatest possible account he gave himself infinite, and with him quite unusual pains, to secure a perfect execution of his opera. In writing for the voices moreover, he had completely changed his style. What indeed can be more different from the florid and frequently insignificant,—or, so to say, anti-significant—passages in the rich, soft, voluptuous melodies of Semiramide, than the simple, emotional, eminently dramatic strains given to the singers in Guillaume Tell? Heine speaks in his "Parisian Letters" of Meyerbeer's mother having once told him that her son was "not obliged to compose;" on which Heine remarks that a windmill might as well say it was not "obliged" to go round: though a windmill will turn if the wind blows, just as a composer will produce music if moved by the spirit. Talking on this most interesting subject of speculation to Ferdinand Hiller, Rossini himself confessed that "when a man has composed thirty-seven operas he begins to feel a little tired." Guillaume Tell, in any case, marks the end of Rossini's career as an operatic composer.

Opera has a distinct history in Italy, in France, and in Germany. For a considerable time it makes progress in Italy. Then Italian composers and Italian singers go abroad taking Italian opera with them. German composers, too, visit Italy, and after studying there return to their native land, to produce with modifications operas which must still be regarded as Italian in character. At last the Germans who have studied in Italy become the rivals of the Italian masters. Then Gluck and Piccinni contend with one another in presence of French audiences, and above all, of French critics. Finally it becomes the turn of the Italians to borrow from the Germans; for Mozart, so highly indebted for his melodic inspiration—or at least for his melodic forms—to Italy, was so much before the Italians in regard to the composition of his orchestra and the construction of his musical pieces, that when Rossini wished to introduce into Italian opera the important reforms which must always be associated with his name, he had nothing to do but to turn to Mozart as a model. Rossini was the first Italian composer who accompanied recitative with the full band, assigned leading parts to bass singers, made of each dramatic scene one continuous piece of music, and brought to perfection those highly varied, amply developed concerted finales, which form so striking a feature in modern Italian opera. All these innovations were simply adaptations from Mozart.

The history of Rossini's Italian career is the history of opera in Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century; for Rossini caused the works of his predecessors to be laid aside, while his own works and those of his immediate successors, and in an artistic sense followers, continued to be played almost to the exclusion of all others until the Verdi period. And even Verdi, who in his latter works has studied dramatic consistency and dramatic effect more than Rossini studied them in his earlier works, must be regarded as belonging, more or less completely, to the school of Rossini.