A mystery of music history – the Messa per Rossini

Interview translated from Stuttgarter Zeitung Musikfest-Journal , 1 st September 2001.

Four days ago, Helmuth Rilling began to explain the mammoth work of the Messa per Rossini piece by piece to his enthusiastic audience in the lecture-concerts. He presented each of the no fewer than 13 composers and sought, found and demonstrated the excellence of their pieces. Today, at last, the Messa can be listened to as a whole. Prof. Ulrich Prinz, scientific director of the Bachakademie, recounts how it came to pass that, 119 years after the appearance of the joint composition, the world premiere took place in Stuttgart. Felix Losert spoke to him.

Musikfestjournal: Herr Prinz, 13 Italian composers composed after Rossini’s death a great requiem mass in remembrance of him. A series of quarrels prevented its performance, and the piece vanished into the archives. How did this fascinating work, which allows us an exciting glance into the depths of music history, this surprising contribution to the history of recent musical archaeology, come to the Internationale Bachakadieme Stuttgart in 1988.

Ulrich Prinz: It began at the Summer Academy in August 1986. It had the title: ‘From Monteverdi to Verdi’. In the singing and conducting courses at that time, Verdi’s Requiem was amongst other works the subject of our classes. In the second week there was a seminar in which we studied each day one of the well-known requiems. After the requiems of Mozart, Cherubini, Berlioz and Brahms, on the Friday Verdi’s masterpeice came up. Pierluigi Petrobelli, ordinarius professor of music history at the Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ and Director of the Verdi Institut in Parma, spoke about the origins of Verdi’s composition. He surprised us with the news that Verdi’s Requiem, as we knew it, had something of a predecessor. When the editor of Verdi‘s complete works, David Rosen, looked through the manuscript, he discovered an earlier version of the ‘Libera me’, which belonged to another, larger, composition.

When on the Saturday Petrobelli, in a long lecture on Verdi, revealed further items from this work, a requiem mass in Rossini’s honour, to which in addition to Verdi 12 other composers had contributed, I had the idea. I approached Helmuth Rilling and said to him: ‘Helmuth, I have a new world premiere for you’. To which he simply retorted: ‘So, you too, Uli?’

From there everything went very quickly. After the end of the Summer Academy in the middle of August, in September Dr. Sabine Tomek – at that time programme planner for our Summer Academy and music festival – and I were already at the Ricordi Music Publishers in Milan. We discussed the situation with Mimma Guastoni, head of Ricordi, and Petrobelli, later also with those responsible for the Rossini and Verdi collected works, Julian Budden and Michele Conati. The publishers immediately showed great interest, but gave us to understand that they could not provide much financial help. We then tried, together with the combined strength of the Bachakademie, Ricordi and the Verdi Institute, to obtain the money needed in order to be able to begin work as quickly as possible.

Musikfestjournal: Did the mass exist as a single manuscript or were the sections dispersed in Italian archives?

Ulrich Prinz: The piece was complete, in two manscripts, but not all 13 were signed. They were only partially to be found in the Ricordi archive. After the failure of the project, three other composers besides Verdi had reclaimed their contributions in order to develop complete masses. Their manuscripts first had to be found. In the end we were lucky. All 13 of the original pieces of this Messa per Rossini came together.

Musikfestjournal: How did the editorial work proceed?

Ulrich Prinz: We proceeded a bit like Verdi. The editorial work of the 13 sections of the mass were suitably divided up among 13 musicologists from Italy, Germany and America.- not least, in order to accelerate the work’s progress.

From the sources we created the score and the piano accompaniment. But we had to do it all by hand, not as today with music software. The editors personally wrote the score and the piano accompaniment of ‘their’ section and at the end Ricordi had the orchestral voices and the choral score written out by professional composers. Today, when the piece is played, copies of these handwritten scores will be used.

Musikfestjournal: So did the Bachakademie carry out the world premiere?

Ulrich Prinz: Yes, after two years of hard work, the day had come. On the occasion of the 1988 music festival we could finally bestow a voice upon this hitherto mute witness of music history. With the world premiere appeared the first volume of the Bachacademie series, which dealt exclusively with the Messa per Rossini. At that time a facsimile of Verdi’s ‘Libera me’ also came out, which we have now exhibited in the foyer of the Liederhalle.

Musikfestjournal: Was the world premier a success?

Ulrich Prinz: You can say that! And since then the Messa per Rossini has been performed not only in Germany and Italy, but also in many countries in Europe and the Americas. That was helped by the royalties from the CD which Hänssler brought out.