A. Hah, bet you think that's a tough one, don't you? Not a bit of it. Britain had 90 ships, while Russia had 50, France 49 and the fledgling US a very respectable 15. Q. Who was fighting whom?
A. Good point. The First Opium War had broken out between Britain and China, in fact. Elsewhere, the Dutch and the Belgians tripped to London to sign a treaty - London: very nice, good venue for a treaty, tea- and coffee-making facilities in the rooms, etc - and promised not to be beastly to each other any more. Also, the Boers founded the independent republic of Natal. Q. Which composer was born in 1839?
A. Mussorgsky. In other worlds, there were also Paul Cezanne and George Cadbury - not two people you normally hear spoken of in the same breath. Being both an art lover and a chocolate lover, I do feel we have to bear them both in mind, though. The man who gave us Cadbury's chocolate. MWAH!" p Although, of course, with my name, I do have some allegiances to the makers of Chocolate Cream. Q. Who married in 1840?
A. Well, that's rather vague, isn't it? I imagine thousands of people married in 1840 - Enid and Keith Sprogg, for example, of 6, The Sewers, East Grinstead. The nuptials to which I must assume you refer, though, were those of Queen Victoria to a rather dull foreign royal, the Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Or, Albert the Square, as he was known to Londoners. Q. Which great wit and man of fashion died in 1840?
A. Again, rather a vague question, but I presume you are referring to Beau Brummell, although, if you ask me, he didn't exactly go out on a high. Beau Brummell, man of genius wit. But what were his last words? What nugget of ingenious observation did he come up with on his deathbed? I'll tell you. T do try,' he said. I do try. Marvellous. Add to that the fact that, when they got his death certificate, they discovered his real name was in fact Bryan, and, well, I think he's ripe for the revisionists. Q. Who would love to have run out of ham?
A. Now you're just being silly. Napoleon, I guess, is your man. He tried another unsuccessful conspiracy and found himself in the fortress of Ham. Q. Who's in and who's out in 1840?
A. Your vaguest yet. Let me try and round up. Fenimore Cooper's new one, The Pathfinder, is out. Work starts on building the Houses of Parliament, transportation to New South Wales for convicts is stopped. The German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich dies, but Monet, Renoir and Rodin are born - what a year! - as are Thomas Hardy, Emile Zola and Peter 'Is this my glass?' Tchaikovsky. While we're at it, two new places of interest get on the map. Kew Gardens has its first queue, and Nelson's Column has its first… er… column. Q. How many people lived in 1841?
A. Wow, now that's a tough one. Not sure I know. Let me tell you what I do know. The population of Britain stands at 18.5 million, only narrowly beating America's admittedly fledgling 17 million. Other news: in Britain, Lord Melbourne has resigned and Sir Robert Peel is the new PM - a Whig for a Tory, as Paul Daniels's dresser was once heard to say. Q. What kept Queen Victoria up at night in 1841?
A. WeU, if you're suggesting it was the baby, then I would say you're wrong. I imagine the last person who was going to stay awake at night was Victoria herself. Yes, in 1841, QV gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Edward. It's said he had his dad's eyes, and his mother's beard. Q. Name a famous Belgian.
A. Ooh, I love these - thanks for the cue. 1841, and Adolphe Sax makes his bid to be included in the game of Ten Famous Belgians when he invents the saxophone. Q. Name a famous novelist of 1841.
A. Another easy one. Charles Dickens will do again, because he's still knocking 'em dead with, this year, The Old Curiosity Shop. While we're talking of old curiosities, let me just add that it was also this year in which Sir Joseph 'Don't call me boring or I'll sue' Whitworth proposed… wait for this… proposed THAT SCREW THREADS SHOULD ALL BE THE SAME! Mmm. The words 'get', 'out' and 'more' need very little rearranging, to be honest. Bring on the music, that's what I say. And what a good year to be around, too, because Rossini is about to break his vow of silence.
A SERIOUS MATER
G
ood. I'm glad we caught up, because it's very important to know not just when things arrived, but also in what context. Could it have been any of those things we've just mentioned that prompted Rossini to come out of musical hiding and spring his first work in years on to an unsuspecting and unready public? Who knows. He'd been working on the piece since 1831 which, in itself, may give the odd clue to what's been keeping him. Remember, this is the man who wrote The Barber of Seville in, some say, only thirteen days. For him, spending twelve years is nothing short of phenomenal, and would maybe hint at there being possibly a crisis of inspiration rather than just that he'd decided to sit back and simply enjoy his money and his cooking. You could give him the benefit of the doubt even here, though, especially considering that the two works he did produce following his self-imposed silence were both religious - this year's Stabat Mater and then, some twenty-two years after that, the Petite Messe Solonnelle. Could it be that he was devoting himself to a greater, somehow more valid, way of working that forced him to write and write and write, until a piece was perfect in the eyes of God? The fly in this argument's ointment is possibly The Sins of Old Age, a series of small and light pieces which Rossini dashed off in his later years, and which are no more than pleasant and amusing litde favours.
The Stabat Mater, though, is something different. It sets the words of the thirteenth-century Franciscan, Jacopone da Todi, describing Mary, die mother of Jesus, grieving at the foot of the cross. It was added to the Roman Catholic liturgy, officially, in 1727 and had been set by an illustrious line of composers over the years, before Rossini had a go: Josquin des Pres, Palestrina, the Scarlattis, Pergolesi, Haydn and Schubert. Maybe this long line of settings, too, added extra pressure on Rossini's need to leave a lasting impression on the Stabat Mater»
Its sad subject matter would continue to inspire beautiful music, long after Rossini too: Verdi, Dvorak, Szymanowski and Poulenc -many were attracted to this delicate little verse. By the time he wrote his version, Rossini was back living in Italy - not in his native Pesaro, but in Bologna. He travelled back to supervise the first performance of the Stabat Mater at the Salle Herz in Paris and, thankfully for him, it was immediately recognized as a late work of beauty and genius. Some have referred to it as a late opera, but this just seems to make light out of what is one of Rossini's chief virtues - his ability to show the human voice in its best light, even if that usually meant, as it would do for an opera composer, a dramatic light. And so Rossini brought out the drama in the lines of the Stabat Mater. I'd say the idea of a mother standing by the cross of her only son is drama enough to justify it. Nip along to hear it in concert, and judge for yourself. In the meantime, let me tell you who else is still around.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR OPUS
1842, then. Who's up, who's down, who's flying around, and who are those magnificent men in their flying machines? Well, I'll answer a full 50 per cent of those questions right now.
Chopin's still around, for one. Tragically, despite being only thirty-two, he's got just another seven years left to live. But 1842 finds him in Paris, probably at his creative peak. Even though he really didn't have the ideal constitution for it and was in somewhat dubious health - in fact, in the flighty world of the ultra-romantic Pole, someone had once remarked that the 'only constant thing about him is his cough'. Just last year, 1841, despite all his debilitating nerves and personal turmoil, he'd gone down a storm in Paris, and a follow-up concert in February 1842 was just as good. When I say 'personal turmoil', I mean chiefly the fact that this was the time Chopin was at the height of his affair with the novelist Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baronne Dedevant, better known as George Sand. At first, he'd resisted her charms - indeed, he'd not immediately recognized any charms at all. T did not like her face,' he said. 'There is something off-putting about her.' Maybe it was the fact that she smoked and wore men's clothes in public. Maybe it was her well-known coterie of lovers. Whatever the initial setback, they were now lovers, living separately in Paris but summering together in Nohant, some 300 kilometres south of Paris, in the heart of Indre et Loire.