Days of Bliss Are in Store: Antonino Pasculli's "Gran Trio Concertante

Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 Days of Bliss Are in Store: Antonino Pasculli's Gran Trio Concertante per Violino, Oboe, e Pianoforte su Motivi del Guglielmo Tell di Rossini Anna Pennington Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC DAYS OF BLISS ARE IN STORE: ANTONINO PASCULLI’S GRAN TRIO CONCERTANTE PER VIOLINO, OBOE, E PIANOFORTE SU MOTIVI DEL GUGLIELMO TELL DI ROSSINI By ANNA PENNINGTON A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Music. Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007 Copyright © 2007 Anna Pennington All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the treatise of Anna Pennington defended on May 7, 2007. ______________________________ Eric Ohlsson Professor Directing Treatise ______________________________ Richard Clary Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Frank Kowalsky Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the generous encouragement of Eric Ohlsson in completing this project, I am greatly indebted. I also wish to thank Sandro Caldini and Olga Visentini, for their unselfish help in obtaining the trio. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 I. PASCULLI AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALY ............................................... 3 Historical Context........................................................................................................... 3 Pasculli’s Life................................................................................................................. 8 II. THE OBOE IN PASCULLI’S HANDS.................................................................... 11 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 11 Instrumental Developments........................................................................................... 11 Pasculli’s Triebert Oboe................................................................................................ 14 Possible Reed Styles ..................................................................................................... 15 III. GRAN TRIO CONCERTANTE: BACKGROUND................................................... 17 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 17 Rossini’s Guglielmo Tell............................................................................................... 18 IV. GRAN TRIO CONCERTANTE: PERFORMER’S ANALYSIS................................ 21 Historical Backdrop ...................................................................................................... 21 Formal Analysis............................................................................................................ 22 Markings and Performance Suggestions........................................................................ 24 Learning Strategies ....................................................................................................... 24 V. CONCLUDING REMARKS ................................................................................... 27 APPENDIX A. GRAN TRIO CONCERTANTE ............................................................. 29 APPENDIX B. LIST OF EDITS................................................................................... 57 APPENDIX C. LIST OF COMPOSITIONS BY PASCULLI........................................ 58 APPENDIX D. LIBRETTO FOR THE ARIAS ADAPTED BY PASCULLI................ 60 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................... 65 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH......................................................................................... 67 iv ABSTRACT The existing repertoire for the oboe has often been described as being lacking in compositions written during the romantic period. Only recently has there been scholarly study revealing multitudes of sonatas, concertos, and various instrumental combinations of chamber music written during this time by lesser well-known composers from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Austria, and France. Antonino Pasculli (1842-1924) is an Italian oboist and composer of this group whose music is being rediscovered and explored. As a virtuoso oboist who traveled Europe from the age of fourteen, Pasculli began to write fantasias based on themes from famous Italian operas, which was a form that was quite popular at the time. These compositions allowed him to showcase his own technical brilliance on the instrument, and they are still considered to be highly difficult for oboists of today. During the last several decades, many of Pasculli’s compositions have been published for the first time, resulting in performances and recordings of his music by oboists from many different countries. Most of these works are for solo oboe or English horn with an accompaniment of piano, harp or orchestra. Only one trio exists, however, and this is the Gran Trio Concertante per violino, oboe, e pianoforte su motivi del Guglielmo Tell, which is based on themes from Gioachino Rossini’s opera, Guillaume Tell. This treatise introduces the trio to the current performing repertoire of the oboe. The document also includes an analysis of the piece, with additional historical information on Italian musical life and politics during the nineteenth century, and a biography of Antonino Pasculli’s life, his oboe playing, and reed style. v INTRODUCTION Antonio Pasculli (1842-1924) is known to oboists as the “Paganini of the oboe,” a title he gave himself when he began touring Europe in the nineteenth century. Like Paganini, he began his career of touring as a soloist at a young age, and he was soon teaching oboe at the local conservatory in his hometown of Palermo. Pasculli began to perform his own compositions, perhaps because he found a lack of pieces to show off his astounding technique. Many of these pieces are fantasias based on themes from nineteenth-century Italian operas, a form quite popular at the time. There are roughly fifteen works for oboe accounted for in Pasculli’s compositional output, most of which involve the oboe as the solo instrument against a backdrop of accompanimental piano, harp, or orchestra. In fact, there is only one piece that stands out as leaning towards the genre of chamber music, and that is a trio written for oboe, violin, and piano entitled Gran Trio Concertante. This work resembles his other compositions involving the oboe, as it is a fantasy on themes of a popular opera from his time. Unfortunately, like much of the nineteenth-century virtuosic Italian repertoire for oboe, this trio remains unpublished, lying in manuscript form in the holdings of the library of the Conservatorio di musica Vincenzo Bellini in Palermo, Sicily. There has been specific research revealing over 150 pieces written for the oboe (or English horn) in Italy alone that are yet unpublished or out of print.1 While many oboists bemoan what appears to be a paucity of solo repertoire of the Romantic era, this dichotomy can and should be diligently resolved. The purpose of this study is to assist such a process by bringing one of these pieces out of obscurity and into the repertoire of oboists everywhere. With its re-introduction into the performance world, Pasculli’s Gran Trio Concertante for oboe, violin, and piano is likely to gain attention from today’s oboists. The title of this treatise is a reference to the duet “Doux aveu!” which Pasculli takes from Act II of Guillaume Tell and uses as the first main theme in his trio. The piano 1 Michele Fiala, “Nineteenth-Century Italian Music for Oboe and English horn: An Annotated Bibliography.” (D.M.A. diss., Arizona State University, 2004). 1 score of the opera published by Novello2, while not a literal translation from the French, uses the English phrase “Days of bliss are in store for us” throughout this love duet between the opera characters Arnold and Matilda. 2 Gioacchino Rossini, Guillaume Tell, ed. Bertold Tours, Novello and Company, Ltd. (London: no date given.) 2 CHAPTER I PASCULLI AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALY Historical Context Italian opera was undoubtedly at the center of all musical life in nineteenth- century Italy. Its tradition was rooted in the several centuries preceding, and like other Italian art-music, it was actively evolving.3 Music schools existed in throughout Italy up until the 1800s, and most of them were associated with the church. However, they ceased to exist in the nineteenth century, largely because of inflation and the decline of monastic orders.4 At the same time, the long Italian tradition of composing and performing church music was slowly dissolving, unable to compete with the gaining popularity of opera. This trend continued throughout the eighteenth century and after.5 Politically, the concept of Italy as a unified country did not truly begin to form until 1859-1860. Napoleon had taken occupation of the peninsula when the French revolutionary forces invaded the Italian states in the 1790s. Before this,

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