HIHO, ROSSINI… AWAY!
O
ver to Paris now, and the French capital seems to be rapidly becoming the centre of the musical universe - that is, if there is a centre of the musical universe. To be fair, the epicentre is probably still Vienna, but France, particularly Paris, and Italy are essential territories to crack, as it were. London? Well, London is somewhere to earn money if you are famous in the classical music world, but it's not anywhere near as important as the rest. Just five years ago, Rossini moved here. He'd already sampled the delights of Vienna and Ixwidon, but now found Paris unpeu more to his liking. He stayed for some six years then left, before returning, late on, for his twilight, 'Indian summer' pieces. The first Paris period, though, saw Rossini at the absolute peak of his powers. Under his belt already - La Cenerentola (Cinderella), La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie), II Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and Semiramide (Half a Pint of Mild®'), as well as a goodly number of pies. Emboldened by his worldwide fame, he decided to reel off a couple of operas that would really suit the current French tastes - ones written particularly to please the Paris audience of the late 1820s. The first came out as Le Comte Ory (The Tory Bastard)® which went down well enough and was very politely welcomed. His second attempt, though, was to put it in the shade - in fact, it would almost become his signature tune.
Now obscenely wealthy and feeling that he was writing the best stuff he'd ever written, he finished his second Paris opera - William Tell, his grand masterpiece. Even the overture was, almost, the culmination of everything he'd been trying to do witii all the other overtures, up to that point. It all just came right. Everything came together in this overture. So much so that it is now played separately from its opera probably more than any other. And, of course, it was at one time - still is for some, me included - inextricably linked to the Lone Ranger, the masked man who had a strange 'Morecambe and Wise' type relationship with his sidekick, Tonto (although, I've got to be honest, I never saw the episode where they are in bed, with Tonto working on his latest play). And this is OK- the link to the Lone Ranger, I mean. At least, I think so. It used to be said that the sign of an intellectual was someone who could hear the William Tell Overture and not think of the Masked Man. Well, personally, I don't mind people linking it. To me it just says classical music is getting out there, people are hearing it, whereas, were you to get all precious about it, then many of them wouldn't be hearing it. And how is that better? Exactly. These days you might say the same about the Hamlet cigar ad. Some people only know Bach's Orchestral Suite No 3 because of the Hamlet ad. But is that a bad tiling? If the alternative - and it almost certainly would be the alternative - is that they don't know die Orchestral Suite No 3 at all, then give me the former, any day. Good. There we are, then. Now, somebody help me down off this soapbox, please.
The opera William Tell is, sadly, less known in its entirety than its near-perfect overture. (But then again, it would be, wouldn't it. You're not really going to find someone using an entire opera as the theme to a Toilet Duck ad, are you?) Maybe this has something to do with the story, though, which, if you're a fruitarian, is highly disturbing, telling as it does the tragic story of Granny Smith, who is cruelly slain, her body cut in half by the evil Tell.
The other big thing about the opera William Tell is that it marks the point at which Rossini simply shut up shop. Stopped composing. Finito. Kaput. The End. Everybody go home. Yes, he simply stopped writing. Apart from a couple of little corkers, right at the last minute of his life, some thirty-four years later, that was it. From then on, he concentrated on becoming the nineteenth-century version of Nigella Lawson, only with a somewhat less attractive figure.
CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
? paraphrase the great Robbie of Williams, let me edutain you.
Uggh. Sorry. Sorry I ever said that. Edutainment - supposedly a cross between education and entertainment - was a bit of a buzzword, recendy, but, thankfully, has fallen on hard times, as my English teacher used to say. Despite the ughism, though, let me just catch up with myself for a moment. It's hard, you see, whizzing through an entire 6000 years in just 304 pages - that means I have to average about twenty years per page. You try that, some time. In fact, I've just spent seven whole lines saying that I'm about to tell you something. Seven lines! In seven lines I should have advanced a full four years. Onward, I think.
What's happening? Who's composing, who's decomposing, to borrow a line from Monty Python? Who's leading the pack, who's following like sheep? Plus, of course, the perennial question, Who's sorry now? Well, much like any other time in history, change is the key word. Everything always has, everything always will, change. But in die early nineteenth century, the sheer rate of change was bordering on the mind-blowing. Railways, for example. They now start to pop up all over the place. In just under twenty years, die amount of rail being laid in the UK goes from a couple of hundred miles' worth to more dian 2,000. A change is gonna come, as Viscount Sam of Cooke apdy stated. Change, in die words of Lord Tears of Fears.
Ch-ch-ch-changes, to quote Earl David of Bowie. If you were to stick a pin anywhere in the map of 1831, and stick your head above die parapet, what would greet you would have been a mass of change. After the obligatory revolution in Paris last year, this year has seen a huge slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia. Lots of the change is 'social', as people are beginning to refer to it, with new groups forming the world over: Joseph Smith's Latterday Saints, for example, or Mormons, get under way in Fayett, New York State, and almost immediately commence foreign missions as far afield as Europe. It was also around this time that a twenty-three-year-old Charles Darwin got the job of naturalist on board the LLMS Beagle, setting sail for South America, New Zealand and Australia. It would be a very different mission from tiiat of Joseph Smith and his followers, and it would be one that simply wouldn't stop repercussing. There were also experiments galore: Faraday, widi light and electromagnetics, for example. It's a big time for change, you see. Hope it was wearing clean underwear.
But what about music? Is all this res novae reflected in the world of black dots and baton waving?
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT - ONLY NOT IN THAT ORDER
s ? is it? Is it reflected in the world of music? Well, if you want die short answer, yes. Of course, if you want the long answer, then: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. In fact, tell you what: let me go into a little more detail, in just a moment. But first, I want to keep you posted on two old friends. Mendelssohn is the first, and the strange netherworld that is opera the second.
Mendelssohn first. If you can imagine that Roger Hargreaves had written the history of classical music, then, for example, Handel would be Mr Greedy. Schoenberg might be Mr Topsy-Turvy, and maybe Wagner could be Mr Bossy. Whatever. Some of them are open to discussion. One that isn't in question, though, is Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, without a shadow of a doubt, is Mr Happy. His music is rarely, if ever, too taxing. It's almost always beautiful, or, if not beautiful, chipper, or if not chipper, then relaxed. The world according to Felix - and remember, his name even means 'happy'. Never really wanted for money, was quite happily married, was recognized as a great composer while he was still alive - something that doesn't always happen - and generally was the sort of person who took his library books back and 'rallied round'.