Cherubini: Requiem in C Minor

Lewisham Choral Society Cherubini: Requiem in C minor Rossini 3 Motets: Salve Regina, Ave Maria and O salutaris hostia Mendelssohn Capriccio brillante for piano & orchestra Mozart 12 solo piano variations on “Ah ! Vous dirai-je, maman” Nico de Villiers – Piano Forest Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas Great Hall, Goldsmiths Saturday, 14 November 2015 Gioachino Rossini Three Motets: Salve Regina Ave Maria O salutaris hostia Felix Mendelssohn Capriccio brillante in B minor for piano & orchestra, Op 22 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 12 variations on “Ah ! Vous dirai-je, maman” for piano solo, K265 Interval Luigi Cherubini Requiem in C minor GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868) Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro on Italy's Adriatic coast on 29 February 1792. When Austrian troops crossed into Italy in 1799, his father was imprisoned and his mother Anna moved with her young son to Bologna to lodge with a pork butcher (Rossini Senior was an inspector of slaughterhouses by profession). Anna pursued a singing career in local theatres while her son started musical studies on the harpsichord, going on to also study the piano, singing and later the cello and composition. At the age of 12 he composed in only three days a highly accomplished set of six string sonatas which reflect the music of his heroes Haydn and Mozart but also look forward in their melodies to his future as an opera composer. Rossini photographed by Félix Nadar in 1858. It is for that role that Rossini is today principally known: by the time he retired from opera at only 37, he had produced 39 such works and his tunes were whistled in the street, such was their popularity. His most famous example is an operatic setting of Beaumarchais' play The Barber of Seville, written in just two or three weeks in 1816. Buoyed up by its success and that of his equally popular setting of the story of Cinderella, La Cenerentola, Rossini began touring the musical capitals of Europe, Vienna, London and Paris, where he took up an appointment as musical director of the Théâtre-Italien. However, after his mother’s death, Rossini returned to Italy in 1829 where, having finished entirely with operas, he wrote a choral and orchestral setting of the Stabat Mater. But little else followed. The Stabat Mater was to be his last major work until his very final years. He eventually returned to Paris in 1855 to settle there with his second wife, Olympe Pélissier, artists' model, one-time lover of the French writer Honoré de Balzac (who described her as “the most beautiful courtesan in Paris”) and holder of a renowned Paris salon during the restoration of the French monarchy in the early 1800s. Rossini was certainly well-off by now – he had been granted a lifetime annuity by Charles X, although after the latter's overthrow the composer faced a long battle to keep it. The couple lived in an apartment in the city centre, with a villa in the village of Passy to which they moved in the summer when the upheaval caused by the restyling of the capital by Baron Haussmann got too much for them. Once safely installed, Rossini could settle down to enjoy his retirement to the full. He and Olympe played hosts to the great and the good of the artistic world, including Wagner, Liszt, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Verdi and Meyerbeer, and held weekly soirées in their apartment or at Passy. But Rossini could not entirely turn his back on composition, which after all had made him the illustrious, renowned and wealthy celebrity that he was in the artistic world and far beyond. But he seemingly had neither the energy nor the inclination to produce large-scale works anymore. He contented himself instead with miniatures written for a variety of chamber ensembles, for voice and for piano solo and intended for private performance. They may have been small in scale but not in quantity: Rossini produced 150 salon pieces in fourteen volumes under the overall title of Péchés de Vieillesse or Sins of Old Age. They may have been whimsical in content and by title (including such pieces as Prélude inoffensif (Inoffensive prelude), Mon prélude hygiènique du matin (My morning constitutional prelude) and Une caresse à ma femme (A caress for my wife)). But they showed the maestro's ease of composition and boundless gift for melody. Two of the motets we sing tonight came from these volumes. The site of Rossini's town apartment in Paris © Martin Bull Three motets: Salve Regina, Ave Maria and O salutaris hostia The Salve Regina appears in the Péchés de Vieillesse collection, as number 9 of Volume 11. It exists in two slightly different versions: the first bears the dedication “To my most beloved friend Abbot Gordini. Gioachino Rossini, Florence 20 March 1850”. This version begins with the words “Salve o Vergine Maria” (Hail, o Virgin Mary) and it is this which we shall be singing tonight. The second, later, version, although practically identical to the first, begins with the words “Salve amabilis Maria” and bears the title Mottetto dedicato a Maria Santissima Annunziata “Salve amabilis Maria” per quartetto soprano, contralto, tenore e basso (Motet dedicated to the Most Holy Mary of the Annunciation “Hail, o amiable Mary” for soprano, alto, tenor and bass quartet). And just to make things more complicated, there also exists a counterfeit version of the motet entitled Hymne à la Musique (Hymn to Music) which begins “Chantons! Toi par qui règne le Génie” (Let us sing! You through whom Genius reigns). But the confusion doesn't end there: the notebooks of the Rossini Foundation give this piece the title Ave Maria, a title which even appears on some recordings and on the score which our conductor had found for us to sing tonight. Some judicious digging which I undertook among various tomes about Rossini revealed however that this assignation is entirely spurious; the version we shall sing should for certain bear the title Salve Regina! It is as number 4 in Volume 3 of the Péchés de Vieillesse collection that the real Ave Maria appears as a four-part setting (for soprano, alto, tenor and bass) with organ accompaniment. The volume itself bore the title Morceaux réservés (Reserved Pieces) and it seems that the Ave Maria was indeed reserved for a special purpose. Rossini had written it in 1852 and later presented it to the consort of the French Emperor Napoleon III, the Empress Eugénie, partly as an attempt to obtain the restoration of a pension for Rossini's dear friend, the composer Michele Carafa, who had studied under Cherubini at the Paris Conservatoire and had ended his career there as a professor in 1858. Richard Osborne in his book on Rossini wittily describes Rossini's dedication of the piece as “a case of God joining hands with Mammon”! It was the 13th century philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas who penned the words of O salutaris hostia as part of a Eucharistic hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi. Many composers were to set these words to music through the ages (Cherubini did so twelve times!). Rossini's setting formed an unaccompanied four-part motet (so again for soprano, alto, tenor and bass) and bore the following inscription: “A little souvenir offered to my friend J. d'Ortigue. Gioachino Rossini, Paris 29 November 1857”. Joseph d'Ortigue, an author and music critic, was co-founder of the new religious music journal La Maîtrise, in which a facsimile of the score of O salutaris hostia was printed a month after the dedication was written. It was the Swiss composer Louis Niedermeyer, a leader in the movement to revive religious music in the nineteenth century, who had asked his friend Rossini to compose an O salutaris to print in La Maîtrise, of which he was the other co-founder. The aim was to offer to readers stylistic examples of church music, both ancient and modern. The motet also became a model for Rossini's later work for soprano and piano Arietta all'antica, which appeared in the Péchés de Vieillesse. Salve o Vergine Maria, Salve o Madre in Hail to Thee O Virgin Mary, Hail O Mother ciel Regina; Queen of Heaven; Sulla terra il guardo inchina, de' tuoi figli Look down to us on Earth, take pity on abbi pietà. Thy Son. Tu di sol tutta vestita, tu di stelle Thou who art robed by the sun, crowned incoronata, tu speranza, with stars, Thou art our hope, the tu avocata de tuo popolo fedel. advocate of Thy faithful people. Salve o Vergine Maria, salve o Madre in Hail to Thee O Virgin Mary, hail O Mother ciel regina; Queen of Heaven; Sulla terra il guardo inchina, de' tuoi figli Look down on us on Earth, take pity on abbi pietà. Thy Son. Salve, salve! Hail to Thee, hail! Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Benedicta tu in mulieribus. Blessed art Thou amongst women Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Holy Mary, Mother of God, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, pray for us sinners, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Amen. O salutaris hostia, O redeeming victim, quae caeli pandis ostium, who opens the door to heaven, bella premunt hostilia: our foes close in: da robur, fer auxilium. give us strength, bring us aid. Translation of Salve Regina & O salutaris hostia © Martin Bull 2015 FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born in the then independent city-state of Hamburg on 3 February 1809, the second of the four children of the banker Abraham Mendelssohn and the linguist, musician and artist Lea Salomon.

Load more