The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School — Text and Context

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Authors: Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland), 1828-1906 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2012 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Rossini, Gioacchino, 1792-1868; Opera -- Italy -- 19th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Text sections 5

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #38534

This editorial note examines the structure and recurring imagery in H. Sutherland Edwards's biography of Rossini, focusing on the composer's movement between Italy and France, his abrupt retirement after Guillaume Tell, and the vivid anecdote of his piano playing leaving keys 'smoking.'

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ROSSINI'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

A contemporary of Cimarosa and of Paisiello, his predecessors, but not, except at the very outset of his career, his models, and of Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, his successors, and in an artistic sense his followers, Rossini is a central figure in the nineteenth-century history of Italian music.

Lives of Rossini have been published freely enough during the last fifty or sixty years. It but rarely happens, even to the greatest man, to have his biography written or his statue erected during his lifetime. But Rossini lived so long that it seemed impossible to wait for his death; and more than one writer seized upon him when he was still a young man. Perhaps it occurred to the Abbe Carpani, the first of Rossini's biographers, that he was already approaching the critical age at which so many great composers--not to speak of painters and poets--had ceased not only to work but to live; Mozart, for instance, Cimarosa, Weber, Herold, Bellini, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. It has been suggested, indeed, that Rossini might perhaps have wished his career to be measured against those of so many other composers whose days were cut short at about the age he had attained when he produced _William Tell_. Rossini was but thirty-seven when _William Tell_, his last work for the stage, and his last work of any importance with the exception of the _Stabat Mater_ was brought out. But when, soon after the production of _Semiramide_, played for the first time in 1823, Stendhal published that _Life of Rossini_ which is known to be founded almost entirely on the Abbe Carpani's work, Rossini, at the age of thirty-one, had already completed the most important portion of his artistic life. Readable, interesting, and in many places charming, Stendhal's _Life of Rossini_ is at the same time meagre, and, worse still, untrustworthy. But there is no reason why a tolerable Life of Rossini, including an account of all the changes and reforms introduced by this composer into Italian opera, should not have been published when he was only thirty-one years of age. There would have been nothing of moment to add to it but a narrative of Rossini's visit to London, of his residence in Paris, and above all, of the circumstances under which he produced _William Tell_ together with his reasons--if they could only be discovered--for abandoning composition when he had once produced that work.

The life of Rossini divides itself, more naturally than most things to which this favourite mode of division is applied, into three parts. During the first period of his existence, extending from his birth to the year 1823 when _Semiramide_ was brought out, he made his reputation. From 1823 when he visited London and Paris, until 1829 when he produced his great masterpiece in the serious style, and afterwards threw down his pen for ever, he made his fortune. Finally, from 1829, the year of _William Tell_, until 1869, the year of his death, he enjoyed his fortune and his reputation; caring not too much for either, and so little desirous to increase the former that he abandoned his "author's rights" in France--fees, that is to say, which he was entitled to receive for the representation of his works--to the Society of Musical Composers.

Rossini made his appearance in public when he was only seven years of age; doing so not, it need scarcely be said, in the character of a composer, but in that of a singer. It was in Paer's _Camilla_, composed for Vienna and afterwards brought out at Bologna, that Rossini, in the year 1799, took the part of a child. "Nothing," says Madame Giorgi-Righetti, the original Rosina in the _Barber of Seville_,[1] "could be more tender, more touching, than the voice and action of this extraordinary child in the beautiful canon of the third act; _senti si fiero instante_. The Bolognese of that time declared that he would some day be one of the greatest musicians known. I need not say whether the prophecy has been verified."

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born on the 29th February, 1792; and the circumstance of his having come into the world in a leap-year justified him, he used to maintain, in counting his birthday, not annually according to the usual custom, but once every four years. According to this method of computation he had numbered nineteen birthdays when, at the age of seventy-seven, he died. What is better worth remembering is the fact that Rossini was born, as if by way of compensation, the very year in which Mozart died; Mozart who, indebted to the Italians for much of the sweetness and singableness of his lovely melodies, was to give to Italy, through Rossini, new instrumental combinations, new dramatic methods, and new operatic forms.

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Edwards structures his biography around a series of sharp contrasts: Rossini's early Italian triumphs versus his later Parisian career, the prolific output of his youth against the long silence after Guillaume Tell. The narrative moves through distinct phases, each marked by a change of scene—from Bologna to Naples, then to Paris and finally back to Italy. A recurring image is that of Rossini at the piano, where his 'lightning-like execution' and 'vertiginous hands' seem to transform the instrument into an orchestra. One anecdote, relayed by Auber, describes the keys appearing to smoke after Rossini played—a striking metaphor for the intensity of his performance.

A Career in Two Acts

The biography divides Rossini's life into two unequal halves: the first, a rapid succession of operas composed between 1810 and 1829; the second, nearly four decades of near-silence after Guillaume Tell. Edwards traces this arc through specific locations—the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris—and through the composer's own explanations. Rossini himself, in a passage quoted by Edwards, cites the July Revolution, his mother's death, and his father's discomfort in France as reasons for abandoning the stage. Yet the narrative also hints at a deeper artistic exhaustion: the strain of producing Guillaume Tell may have been one he did not wish to repeat. Edwards does not resolve the question definitively, but the structure of the book itself—moving from a dense catalog of works to a sparse aftermath—mirrors this abrupt shift.

The Piano as Orchestra

Edwards repeatedly returns to Rossini's pianism as a window into his musical mind. The most vivid description comes from Auber, who recalls Rossini singing Figaro's cavatina 'Largo al fattotum' with a 'beautiful baritone voice' and accompanying himself with such speed that the keys seemed to smoke. Edwards contrasts this with the performances of professional singers like Pellegrini, Galli, and Lablache, whom Rossini surpassed in spirit and verve. The image of hands galloping 'not on a key-board but on an orchestra' collapses the distinction between piano and ensemble, suggesting that Rossini's compositional genius was inseparable from his physical command of the instrument. This anecdote, placed early in the narrative, sets a standard of virtuosity against which later descriptions of his operatic works are measured.

Paris and the Politics of Patronage

Rossini's move to Paris in the 1820s marks a shift in the biography's focus from creative output to institutional maneuvering. Edwards details the composer's appointment as director of the Théâtre des Italiens with a salary of 20,000 francs, and his subsequent resignation after eighteen months—only to receive a continued stipend as 'Inspector of Singing,' a post with 'purely nominal' duties. The French government's aim was to keep Rossini in the country and secure new works for the Académie. This arrangement produced four major operas, including Le Siège de Corinthe and Moïse, both reworkings of earlier Italian scores. Edwards presents these adaptations not as mere translations but as strategic responses to French taste, a process that culminates in the original Guillaume Tell. The narrative here becomes as much about cultural diplomacy as about music.

The Unwritten Faust

Among the most intriguing passages in Edwards's account is Rossini's abandoned plan for an opera on Goethe's Faust. The composer, in conversation with Ferdinand Hiller, describes having 'planned the whole scenarium' with the librettist Jouy, only to be deterred by a 'regular Faust mania' that swept Parisian theatres. This episode, placed just before the account of his retirement, functions as a turning point: the project that might have extended his career instead becomes a symbol of withdrawal. Edwards does not speculate on what the opera might have sounded like, but the mere fact that Rossini considered it—and that he cited external fashion as a reason for abandoning it—adds a layer of contingency to the narrative. The Faust plan remains a ghost in the biography, a reminder of paths not taken.

The Stabat Mater and the Final Silence

After Guillaume Tell, Edwards notes, Rossini composed 'nothing whatever of importance except his thoroughly beautiful Stabat Mater.' This sacred work, produced decades later, stands as an isolated monument in the composer's late years. The biography treats it as a coda, a single major piece that does not reverse the pattern of silence. Edwards refrains from claiming that the Stabat Mater represents a late stylistic shift or a return to form; instead, he presents it as an exception that proves the rule. The narrative ends not with a triumphant finale but with a quiet dissolution, as Rossini returns to Italy to care for his aging father. The structure of the book—accelerating through the early operas, then slowing to a near-halt—enacts the very trajectory it describes.

Readers approaching this biography should attend to the way Edwards uses anecdote and scene to build his portrait. The smoking piano keys, the abandoned Faust, the nominal inspectorship—these details are not decorative but structural, each one marking a pivot in Rossini's career. The book rewards those who read for movement: between countries, between genres, between sound and silence. Edwards's Rossini is a composer defined as much by what he stopped doing as by what he achieved.

Reading about Rossini’s retreat after Guillaume Tell, I thought of how some stories just end quietly, leaving you staring at the silence. The way his keys nearly smoked under his fingers—that intensity abandoned—reminds me of the old operatic world captured in Amadis of Gaul, an opera As it is perform'd at the King's Theatre in the Hay-market — Background and Themes. It lingers like a half-remembered tune, warm and slightly sad.