Well known as this commencement is (it resembles the beginning of a finale in a quartett of Haydn in E flat-major):
yet his method of giving it with the different syllables of the text in this manner is quite new; but whether good or not, is still the question; to me it always sounded as though travestied, as if, for instance, a song which admits of a feeling execution were executed upon a singing instrument and for fun’s sake so caricatured that it excited laughter instead of emotion. At any rate no instrumentalist of taste would play the above song staccato.
The following and similar crescendo passages are also peculiar to Rossini, they appear in almost all his musical pieces, and the Italian public are thrown into ecstasies by them; for instance, in the overture to the “Italiana.”
In this manner it continues for a while, until at length at the strongest forte, the public break out into a furious clapping of hands and shouts of “Bravo!” In fact it can so little resist such a crescendo, that even the luckless imitators of Rossini, like Signor Romano in the opera last night, understood how to draw down a storm of applause by it. That such passages are frequently very incorrect and offensive from the passing notes occurring in them, it is not necessary for me to remark; even in the celebrated cavatina from “Tancredi,” so enthusisiastically admired throughout Italy, and which was also sung to-day, there are in the very first bars the most hideous-sounding octaves, between the bass and the second hautboy, that I ever heard.
The first result of my judgment of Rossini is, therefore, that he is by no means wanting in invention and genius and with those qualifications had he been scientifically educated, and led to the only right way by Mozart’s classical masterpieces, he might readily have become one of the most distinguished composers of vocal-music of our day, but, as he now writes, he will not raise Italian music, but much rather lower it. In order to be new, Rossini departs more and more from the simple and grand style of song of former days, and does not reflect that in so doing he wholly robs the voice of its charm and advantages, and actually debases it, when he forces it to execute passages and fioritures, which every petty instrumentalist can produce much purer, and especially much more connected, because he has no need to express a syllable every time on the third or fourth note. With his “flowery song,” however much it may please, he is therefore in a fair way to make a clearance of all real song which is already now very scarce in Italy, and in which the despicable horde of Imitators, who here as well as in Germany pursue their pitiful calling, are doing their best to assist him.