Classical Music Composer Gioachino Rossini - Classical Music William Tell Overture

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Classical Music Composer: Gioachino Rossini

William Tell Overture

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 – November 13, 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best known operatic works include Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), La Cenerentola, La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart." Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.

Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomed Napoleon Bonaparte's troops when they arrived in northern Italy. When Austria restored the old regime in 1796, Rossini's father was sent to prison and his mother took him to Bologna, making a living as a leading singer at various theatres of the Romagna region. Her husband would ultimately join her in Bologna. During this time, Rossini was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who had difficulty supervising the boy.

He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher while his father played the horn in the orchestras of the theatres at which his wife sang. The boy had three years of instruction in the playing of the harpsichord from the eccentric Giuseppe Prinetti, of Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only; Prinetti also owned a business selling beer and had a propensity to fall asleep while standing. These qualities made him a fit subject for ridicule in the eyes of his student.

Education of classical music

He was eventually taken from Prinetti and apprenticed to a blacksmith. In Angelo Tesei, he found a congenial music master, and learned to sight-read, to play accompaniments on the piano, and to sing well enough to take solo parts in the church when he was ten years of age. Important from this period are six sonate a quattro, or string sonatas, composed in three days, unusually scored for two violins, cello and double bass. The original scores were found in the Library of Congress in Washington DC after World War II, dated from 1804 when the composer was twelve. Often transcribed for string orchestra, these sonatas reveal the young composer's affinity for Haydn and Mozart, already showing signs of operatic tendancies, punctuated by frequent rhythmic changes and dominated by clear, songlike melodies.

In 1805 he appeared at the theatre of the Commune in Ferdinando Paer's Camilla; his only public appearance as a singer. He was also a capable horn player, treading in the footsteps of his father. Around this time, he composed individual numbers to a libretto by Vincenza Mombelli called Demetrio e Polibio, which was handed to the boy in pieces. Though it was Rossini's first opera, written when he was thirteen or fourteen, the work was not staged until the composer was twenty years old, premiering as his sixth official opera.

In 1806 Rossini became a cello student under Cavedagni at the Conservatorio di Bologna. The following year he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre Stanislao Mattei (1750–1825). He learned to play the cello with ease, but the pedantic severity of Mattei's views on counterpoint only served to drive the young composer's views toward a freer school of composition. His insight into orchestral resources is generally ascribed not to the strict compositional rules he learned from Mattei, but to knowledge gained independently while scoring the quartets and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. At Bologna , he was known as "il Tedeschino" ("the Little German") on account of his devotion to Mozart.

Early career classical music composer

Through the friendly interposition of the Marquis Cavalli, his first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract), was produced at Venice when he was a youth of 18 years. But two years before this he had already received the prize at the Conservatorio of Bologna for his cantata Il pianto d'Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo. Between 1810 and 1813 at Bologna, Rome, Venice and Milan, Rossini produced operas of varying success, most notably La pietra del paragone and Il Signor Bruschino, with its brilliant and unique overture. In 1813, Tancredi and L'Italiana in Algeri were even bigger successes, and catapulted the 20-year-old composer to international fame.

The libretto for Tancredi was an arrangement by Gaetano Rossi of Voltaire's tragedy Tancrède. Traces of Ferdinando Paer and Giovanni Paisiello were undeniably present in fragments of the music. But any critical feeling on the part of the public was drowned by appreciation of such melodies as "Di tanti palpiti... Mi rivedrai, ti rivedrò", which became so popular that the Italians would sing it in crowds at the law courts until called upon by the judge to desist.

By his 21st birthday he had established himself as the idol of the Italian opera public. Rossini continued to write operas for Venice and Milan during the next few years, but their reception was tame and in some cases unsatisfactory after the success of Tancredi. In 1815 he retired to his home at Bologna, where Domenico Barbaia, the impresario of the Naples theatre, contacted an agreement that made him musical director of the Teatro San Carlo and the Teatro Del Fondo at Naples.He would compose one opera a year, for each. His payment was to be 200 ducats per month; he was also to receive a share from the gambling tables set in the theatre's "ridotto", amounting to about 1000 ducats per annum. This was an extraordinarily lucrative arrangement for any professional musician at that time.

He visited the Naples conservatory, and although less than four years senior to Mercadante said to the Director, Niccolò Zingarelli, "My compliments Maestro - your young pupil Mercadante begins where we finish".

Some older composers in Naples, notably Zingarelli and Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer; but all hostility was made futile by the enthusiasm which greeted the court performance of his Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, in which Isabella Colbran, who subsequently became the composer's wife, took a leading part. The libretto of this opera by Giovanni Schmidt was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth. The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the airs instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the recitativo secco was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet.

The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Rossini's most famous opera was produced on February 20, 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The libretto, a version of Pierre Beaumarchais' stage play Le Barbier de Séville, was newly written by Cesare Sterbini and not the same as that already used by Giovanni Paisiello in his own Barbiere, an opera which had enjoyed European popularity for more than a quarter of a century. Much is made of how quickly Rossini's opera was written, scholarship generally agreeing upon two or three weeks. Later in life, Rossini claimed to have written the opera in only twelve days. It was a colossal failure when it premiered as Almaviva; Paisiello's admirers were extremely indignant, sabotaging the production by whistling and shouting during the entire first act. However, not long after the second performance, the opera became so successful that the fame of Paisiello's opera was transferred to Rossini's, to which the title The Barber of Seville passed as an inalienable heritage.

Later in 1822, a 30-year-old Rossini succeeded in meeting Beethoven, who was then aged 51, deaf, cantankerous, and in failing health. Communicating in writing, Beethoven noted that: “Ah, Rossini. So you’re the composer of The Barber of Seville. I congratulate you. It will be played as long as Italian opera exists. Never try to write anything else but opera buffa; any other style would do violence to your nature.”

Classical Composer Privacy

Between 1815 and 1823 Rossini produced 20 operas. Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time the tragic close was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to Otello.

Conditions of stage production in 1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of Cinderella for a libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera La Cenerentola was as successful as Barbiere. The absence of a similar precaution in construction of his Mosè in Egitto led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus "Dal tuo stellato soglio" to divert attention from the dividing waves.

In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married the renowned opera singer Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he moved from Italy to Vienna where his operas were the rage of the audiences. He directed his Cenerentola in Vienna, where Zelmira was also performed. After this he returned to Bologna; but an invitation from Prince Metternich to come to Verona and "assist in the general re-establishment of harmony" was too tempting to be refused, and he arrived at the Congress in time for its opening on October 20, 1822. Here he made friends with Chateaubriand and Dorothea Lieven.

In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre, London, he came to England, being much fêted on his way through Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to King George IV and the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months. The next year, he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X gave him a contract to write five new operas a year; and at the expiration of the contract, he was to receive a generous pension for life.

End of career

During his Paris years, between 1824 and 1829, Rossini created the comic opera Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The production of his Guillaume Tell in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. He was thirty-eight years old, and had already composed thirty-eight operas. Guillaume Tell was a political epic adapted from Schiller’s play (1804) about the thirteenth century Swiss patriot who rallied his country against the Austrians. The libretto was by Étienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by Armand Marrast. The music is remarkable for its freedom from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera, the overture serving as a model for romantic overtures throughout the 19th century. Though an excellent opera, it is rarely heard uncut today, as the original score runs more than four hours in performance. The overture is one of the most famous and frequently recorded works in the classical repertoire.

In 1829 he returned to Bologna. His mother had died in 1827, and he was anxious to be with his father. Arrangements for his subsequent return to Paris on a new agreement were temporarily upset by the abdication of Charles X and the July Revolution of 1830. Rossini, who had been considering the subject of Faust for a new opera, did return, however, to Paris in November of that year.

Six movements of his Stabat Mater were written in 1832 by Rossini himself, and the other six by Giovanni Tadolini, a good musician who was asked by Rossini to complete the work. However, Rossini composed the rest of the score in 1841. The success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera; but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to his death in 1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives—the life of swift triumph, and the long life of seclusion, of which biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish culture, his mask of humility and indifference.

Later years in classical music

His first wife died in 1845, and on August 16, 1846, he married Olympe Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of Judith and Holofernes. Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he settled in Paris in 1855, where his house was a centre of artistic society. Rossini had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these two passions fully once he retired from composing, and today there are a number of dishes with the appendage "alla Rossini" to their names that were either created by him or specifically for him. Probably the most famous of these is Tournedos Rossini, still served by many restaurants today.

In the meantime, after years of various physical and mental illnesses, he had slowly returned to music, composing obscure little trifles intended for private performance. These Péchés de vieillesse ("Sins of Old Age") are grouped into 14 volumes, mostly for solo piano, occasionally for voice and various chamber ensembles. Often whimsical, these pieces display Rossini’s natural ease of composition and gift for melody, showing obvious influences of Bellini, with many flashes of the composer’s long buried desire for serious, academic composition. He died at his country house at Passy on Friday November 13, 1868, brought about by complications following a heart attack. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France. In 1887, his remains were moved to the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, in Florence, at the request of the Italian government.

Honors and tributes

He was a foreign associate of the institute, grand officer of the Legion of Honour, and the recipient of innumerable orders. Immediately after Rossini's death, Giuseppe Verdi proposed to collaborate with 12 other Italian composers on a "Requiem for Rossini", to be performed on the first anniversary of his death, conducted by Angelo Mariani. The music was written, but the performance was abandoned shortly before its scheduled premiere. Verdi re-used the Libera me, Domine he had written for the Rossini Requiem in his 1872 Requiem for Manzoni. In 1989, the conductor Helmuth Rilling recorded the original "Requiem for Rossini" in the world premiere.

Classical Music Composer: Gioachino Rossini

William Tell Overture

The "William Tell Overture" is the instrumental introduction to the opera William Tell by Gioachino Rossini. There has been repeated use (and sometimes parody) of this overture in popular media, most famously for being the theme music for the Lone Ranger radio and television shows. It is quoted by Dmitri Shostakovich in his Symphony No. 15. William Tell was composed in 1829 and was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, after which he went into semi-retirement, although he continued to compose cantatas, sacred music, and secular vocal music. Franz Liszt prepared a piano transcription of the overture in 1838 (S.552).

The overture is in four parts, each segueing into the next:

• Prelude - a slow passage with low-pitch instruments such as cello and bass
• Storm - dynamic section played by full orchestra
• Ranz des Vaches (call to the dairy cows) - featuring the English horn (this segment is often used in animated cartoons to signify daybreak)
• Finale - ultra-dynamic "cavalry charge" galop heralded by trumpets and played by full orchestra; this segment is often used in popular media to denote galloping horses and became the Lone Ranger theme music

Notable cover versions, parodies and other uses

Music

• The song served as the B-side to Glen Campbell's 1977 No. 1 hit, "Southern Nights".
• In 1982, Joey DeMaio, the bassist for the power metal band Manowar, recorded a solo bass version of the Overture for the debut Manowar album Battle Hymns (Manowar album) under the title of "William's Tale".
• Mike Oldfield released his cover of the Overture in 1977.
• Rock'n'roll versions include "Piltdown Rides Again" by The Piltdown Men and "Apple Knocker" by B. Bumble and the Stingers.

Comedy

• Spike Jones and his City Slickers released a parody version of the Overture in 1948. It peaked at Number 6 on the charts and is typically included in "greatest hits" compilations of Jones' work.
• Victor Borge used the cavalry-charge phrase in one of his short routines, in which he played the sequence of notes in a "downward" scale instead of "upward", and in a higher octave; then got a laugh from the audience when he said "Ohhhh!" and turned the sheet music "right side up" and played the tune correctly.
• Comedian Anita Renfroe uses the finale of the overture to back her "Momsense" segment.
• British comedian Bill Bailey, along with the BBC Concert Orchestra, performed a 'Cockney Arrangement' version of theme as part of his live show Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra. The 're-arrangement' involved mixing the Overture with 'cockney' music including "Any Old Iron (song)", and the theme tune from "Bullseye (UK game show)".
• It is said that the definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think about The Lone Ranger

Film

• Wendy Carlos recorded a Moog Synthesizer version for the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange.
• Walt Disney used a version of the music in the 1935 animated cartoon classic "The Band Concert".

Television

• The "March of the Swiss Soldiers" finale was the theme music for The Lone Ranger shows, both on radio (1933-1954), and television (1949-1957)
• The song was featured prominently on the U.S. television game show The Price Is Right's now-retired pricing game "Hurdles" as the hurdler raced across the gameboard. The song was also used as the clock music for "Race Game" in the 1985 syndicated version.
• A jazzed-up version of the Overture was used as the theme song for the Canadian children's program You Can't Do That on Television from 1981 to 1989.
• Brave Combo adapted their unique take on the Overture for use as the opening theme song for the PBS television series Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns.
• In the later seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, the overture can be heard, notably in "Busy Going Backwards"
• In Japan, it was used as an opening theme of the variety program We Funny Families（オレたちひょうきん族).
• The Magic School Bus used a variant of the fourth movement as Carlos's "Concerto for Invented Instrument" in the episode "In the Haunted House".
• A musical segment of Animaniacs features comedic descriptions of each United States President (up to then-incumbent Bill Clinton), sung to the tune of the William Tell Oveture.
• The Brady Bunch. The episode is #106 and is titled The Cincinnati Kids (AKA The King's Island Show) It aired in the fifth season of The Brady Bunch on Friday November 23, 1973. The Bunch visits a new amusement park in Ohio, where Jan accidentally loses Dad's important blueprints. In an attempt to get the Blueprints back to Mr. Brady for his important meeting the Brady Bunch children run through the park at breakneck speed carrying the blueprints to the William Tell Overture

Commercials

• In the 1960s the finale was used in a series of commercials for Philip Morris' Lark brand of cigarettes. People on the street would respond to a "Show us your Lark pack" sign by holding up their cigarette packages. Behind the visuals, Rossini's music would play, with a chorus singing "Have a Lark, have a Lark, have a Lark today!".

Games

• Kyle Ward, under the pseudonym Symphonius, released a synthesized version of the overture, "Tell", which was used on the dance game In The Groove.

Other

• The overture is played at many sporting events. At University of Iowa basketball games, the song is usually accompanied by members of the student section wearing a cowboy hat and riding a stick horse.
• A quarter-mile strip of asphalt in Lancaster, California was grooved to play the William Tell Overture (albeit somewhat off-key) for motorists driving over it at 55 mph with Honda Civics as part of an ad campaign for Honda.