The Barber of Seville Overture

– Gioacchino Rossini

Born February 29, 1792 in Pesaro, Italy
Died November 13, 1868 in Paris, France

The work was first performed on February 20, 1816, in Rome. It is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion, and strings.

Gioacchino Rossini’s reputation as a composer rests largely on the long string of successful operas he composed in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  Of his thirty-nine operas, only a small handful is presented on modern stages.  However, his familiarity with today’s audiences is because of the colorful overtures written to begin his stage works.  No other composer approached his fame in his day and then, at the ripe old age of 33, he retired to Italy.  During his retirement, he composed several short songs and instrumental works, some of which were published under the amusing title “The Sins of My Old Age,” but never again did he compose for the opera. 

During Rossini’s operatic years, he was recognized as an especially fine craftsman of operatic scenes, but today’s audiences are perhaps more familiar with the overtures.  These musical gems, so popular and of lasting charm, were often dashed off immediately before the premiere of the opera.  This procrastination, at least in the eyes of theater owners, led to one occasion when one such owner locked the composer in an upstairs room of the opera house and directed a guard to keep him incarcerated until he finished the overture for the evening’s premiere.  As Rossini completed each page, it was dropped to the copyist waiting outside the window.

The Barber of Seville was composed in less than three weeks when the composer was twenty-four years of age.  However, as usual, Rossini had not even begun the overture when the premiere was about to take place.  Instead, he substituted the overture he used for his 1815 dramatic opera Elizabeth, Queen of England at the last minute.  Strangely, that overture had been borrowed from his 1813 opera Aureliano in Palmira when he found himself in the same situation without an overture for Elizabeth.  However, since neither Aureliano nor Elizabeth had been heard in Rome, where the premiere was to take place, Rossini made the switch.  Nobody noticed that an overture to a serious opera was now used to introduce a comic opera.

The work begins with the typical introduction featuring crystalline woodwind solos and carefully measured orchestration.  Although it retains a modified sonata form, the piece flows deliberately and never feels as if it attempts to fill a preexisting mold.  The Allegro is rhythmic, preparing the listener for the comedic tone of the opera (even though it was written originally for a serious one).  As in Rossini’s operatic finales, the overtures boast a slow, steady crescendo produced by layering instrument upon instrument while repeating a rhythmic and melodic pattern.  The effect produces the famous “Rossini crescendo,” a gradual increase of volume and thickening of texture primarily associated with the composer.

Gli Uccelli (The Birds), Suite for Small Orchestra

– Ottorino Respighi

Born July 9, 1879, in Bologna, Italy
Died April 18, 1936, in Rome, Italy

This work was first performed in June of 1928 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with the composer conducting.  It is scored for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, harp, celesta, and strings.

Though he later appeared in public, both as a conductor and a pianist, Respighi began his career as a violinist shortly after he graduated from the Liceo Musicale Rossini in Bologna in 1901. Around 1905 Respighi turned his attention to the historic viola d'amore and he became quite adept at the performance of early Italian scores for the instrument. In time his interest was extended to the arrangement of a considerable amount of Renaissance and early Baroque music. He transcribed Frescobaldi's Toccatas and Fugues for piano, and created a modern edition of Monteverdi's Lamento di Arianna. He made orchestral arrangements of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D Major, Passacaglia in C Minor, and of three of his chorales. The year before he died, he re-edited and orchestrated Monteverdi's Orfeo.

Respighi was not content merely to rearrange and transcribe old music. However, many of his mature works employ the antique church modes. Two of his most successful efforts were his three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances. It was only logical that Respighi should turn to four early composers for inspiration in Gli Uccelli (The Birds) – Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), Jacques de Gallot (died ca. 1690), Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), and an anonymous English composer.

Respighi's suite of Gli Uccelli is in five parts, consisting of a prelude and portraits of four birds – not merely their characteristic calls, but also a sense of their behavior. For the Prelude (allegretto moderato), Respighi borrowed a theme from Pasquini, in his day the organist at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, harpsichordist for the Rome Opera, and chamber musician to Prince Giovanni Battista Borghese. Although he composed ten operas, eight oratorios, and volumes of chamber music, Pasquini is best remembered for his harpsi­chord music. His theme in this prelude is initially heard in the first violins and woodwinds, and is then repeated in various registers and instrumental combina­tions. Succeeding interludes suggest the bird songs of the movements yet to come. Oboe and violins intro­duce the hen; flute, bassoon, and violins present the cuckoo; and the flute hints at the nightingale.

For La Colomba (The Dove), the oboe plays a theme by Jacques de Gallot, who was a member of a distinguished family of French lutenists and wrote a collection of Pieces de Luth. The oboe theme is heard over a quiet background of muted strings and harp. Twittering violins accompany a more expansive melody for cellos, taken up by the woodwinds. The violins once again suggest the cooing dove against a pattern of fluttering flutes and, toward the end, a harp glissando adds to the gentleness of the warbling flute and chirping strings.

La Gallina (The Hen) is based on a melody Respighi found in Jean Philippe Rameau's Nouvelle Suite de Pieces pour clavecin that resembles the clucking of a chicken, heard here in the first violins. Rameau's keyboard works are better known today than any of his fifteen operas and ballets, though these stage works were his greatest source of fame in Eighteenth-Century Paris. The hen's theme in Respighi's music is punctuated by oboe, with accompaniment for woodwinds, strings and muted trumpet. With colorful key changes, the melody is taken by violins and clarinets, by oboe and clarinets and, toward the close, by the clarinet alone with violin trills.

 To find the evocative melody of L’Usignuolo (The Nightingale), Respighi delved into an old English collection of virginal music (the virginal was an early keyboard instrument akin to the harpsichord). The flute is given the characteristic birdcall, as horns and low strings provide the background. The nightingale's notes are in­terspersed by gentle phrases from other woodwinds and the call is echoed by the piccolo. Eventually the horn takes up the melody, contrasted against the woodwinds.

Il Cuccu (The Cuckoo) borrows again from Pas­quini. The cuckoo's notes are heard in quick succession by flute, clarinet, and horn. Violins and celesta set the evocative atmosphere. An expressive melody for first violins expands during the woodwind imitations amidst persistent birdsongs. The full orchestra rounds off the work with the theme of the Prelude, which now appears to have been the same as Pasquini's cuckoo from the start.

Concerto in E Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op.64

– Felix Mendelssohn

Born February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, Germany
Died November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Germany

This work was first performed on March 13, 1845, in Leipzig, Germany, with Ferdinand David as soloist and Danish composer Niels Gade conducting.  It is scored for pairs of woodwinds, horns, and trumpets, with timpani and strings.

The most intensely Romantic music is often represented as having been written by composers whose personal lives were fraught with misfortune. The heroic character of Beethoven’s middle period is often depicted as springing from the pen of the master who fought against impending deafness to produce heartfelt art from his anguish.  Any number of Romantic composers may be plugged into a similar formula and, in a few cases, the paradigm even holds true – but not in the case of Felix Mendelssohn.

Coming from a wealthy family, Mendelssohn had no financial worries.  His banker father, although a converted Lutheran, was the son of the pre-eminent Age of Enlightenment Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.  Felix, along with his sister Fanny, received the best musical education money could buy.  As an adult the composer’s personal life was the model of domestic bliss with his joyful marriage to Cecile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a minister in the French Reform Church.  An undisputed giant in Europe’s musical community, Mendelssohn was much sought-after as both composer and conductor, beginning his tenure with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1836 at the tender age of twenty-seven.  Every aspect of his life was nearly perfect, but such a shining star could only burn out quickly.  Mendelssohn died at the age of thirty-eight, probably from a stroke – the same malady that killed Fanny a year before.

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor is a late work, dating from the end of 1844, although much of the piece was sketched over the course of the previous decade.  By 1835 he had resolved to compose a work for his friend, the virtuoso violinist Ferdinand David.  However, the composer’s many conducting obligations and extensive travels forced him to shelve the project for nine years. 

The resulting work is a gem of the solo repertoire.  Opening immediately with the soloist and completely foregoing the customary orchestral exposition, the piece begins with a charming melody that has become the signature of this concerto.  Traditionally cast in sonata form, the movement shows Mendelssohn’s expertise at paring down the orchestral fabric, allowing smaller groups of instruments to accompany the soloist.  The first movement is fused to the second by a single sustained note in the bassoon, leading to a lyrical Andante theme.  In this middle movement, Mendelssohn skillfully exploits the legato capabilities of the violin while accompanying these passages with multiple stops of considerable difficulty – all played simultaneously by the soloist.  The finale is a brilliant and elegant romp – a clear gesture of homage to the virtuoso tradition of solo violinists.

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