CHAPTER IX
THE “STABAT MATER.”
ROSSINI, though he wrote no more for the stage, did not all at once cease to write. In 1832, a distinguished Spaniard, Don Varela, prevailed upon him to compose a “Stabat Mater,” which was not intended to be made public. Rossini fell ill, and being unable to complete the work himself, got Tadolini to finish three of the pieces. Nine years afterwards, Don Varela being dead, his heirs sold the “Stabat” to a music publisher, when Rossini claimed at law the copyright of the work, and gained his action. He now composed three pieces to replace those of Tadolini, and sold his “Stabat” thus complete to Troupenas.
Rossini had previously retired to Bologna, where he discovered the talent of Alboni, then a young girl, and taught her, very carefully, all the great contralto parts in his operas. He also allowed himself to be appointed honorary director of the Lyceum of Bologna, where the duties he assumed were by no means nominal. He took a great interest in the institution, as the school in which he had received his own education, and did all he could to improve it during a residence at Bologna of some dozen years. It amused him, he said, to hear the pupils, who formed a complete orchestra, play all possible kinds of orchestral works.
In the summer of 1836, Rossini paid a short visit to Frankfort, where he met Mendelssohn, and passed several days in his society.
“I had the pleasure,” says Ferdinand Hiller, “of seeing almost daily in my father’s house the two men, one of whom had written his last, the other, his first great work. The winning manners of the celebrated maestro captivated Mendelssohn, as they did everyone else; and Mendelssohn played for him as long, and as much as he wished, both his own compositions and those of others. Rossini thought of those days with great interest, and often turned the conversation to the master who was so soon torn from us. He informed us that he had heard his ‘Ottetto’ very well executed in Florence, and I was obliged to play for him, four-handed, the symphony in A minor with Madame Pfeiffer, a very excellent pianist from Paris, who was then stopping at Trouville.”
Between Rossini’s visit to Frankfort and visit to Trouville, an interval of eighteen years had elapsed, during which Rossini lost his first wife (1845) and married again (Madame Olympe Pelissier, 1847).
Duprez had now appeared with the most brilliant success in “Guillaume Tell;” but the enthusiastic admiration which Rossini’s admirable dramatic music at last elicited, in no way shook his determination never to write again for the stage.
The “Stabat Mater” too, performed in public for the first time in 1842, had increased the composer’s reputation by exhibiting his genius in a new light. Some critics, it is true, complained that the music was not sufficiently devotional, that it was terrestrial, theatrical, essentially operatic in its character.
Rossini told Ferdinand Hiller, that he had written the “Stabat Mater” mezzo serio; but perhaps Rossini was only mezzo serio himself in saying so.
Much nonsense has been written about this very beautiful work, which, on its first production, was severely though clumsily handled in several quarters, from a parochial point of view. Its lovely melodies are indeed admirably unlike the music of the psalms sung in our churches; there is also a little more naiveté, a little more inspiration, in the poetry of the “Stabat Mater” than in the tortured prose, measured into lengths, after the fashion of Procrustes, which certain poetical firms have arranged, in pretended imitation of David, for the use of our Protestant congregations. The poem of the “Stabat Mater” is full of beauty and tenderness; and even in the passages most terrible by their subject, the versification never loses its melody and its grace. Whatever else may be said of Rossini’s “Stabat,” it cannot be maintained that it is not in harmony with the stanzas to which it is set.
Besides the “Stabat Mater” was composed, as Raphael’s Virgins were painted, for the Roman Catholic Church, which at once accepted it, without ever suspecting that Rossini’s music was not religious in character.
Doubtless the music of the “Stabat” bears a certain resemblance to Rossini’s operatic music; but that only means that the composer, in whatever style he may write, still preserves something of his individuality. The resemblance between Handel’s opera music and oratorio music is far greater, and, indeed, in the case of some airs, amounts, as nearly as possible, to identity. At least, in Rossini’s “Stabat Mater,” there are no bravura airs. The style throughout is simple, fervent, sincere.
“The ‘Stabat’ of Rossini,” wrote Heine to the Allgemeine Zeitung, in 1842, “has been the great event of the season. The discussion of this masterpiece is still the order of the day, and the very reproaches which, from the North German point of view, are directed against the great maestro, attest in a striking manner the originality and depth of his genius; ‘the execution is too mundane, too sensual, too gay for this ideal subject. It is too light, too agreeable, too amusing.’ Such are the grievous complaints of some dull and tedious critics who, if they do not designedly affect an outrageous spiritualism, have at least appropriated to themselves by barren studies very circumscribed and very erroneous notions on the subject of sacred music. As among the painters, so among the musicians, there is an entirely false idea as to the proper manner of treating religious subjects. Painters think, that in truly Christian subjects, the figures must be represented with cramped, narrow contours, and in forms as bleached and colourless as possible; the drawings of Overbeck are their prototype in this respect. To contradict this infatuation by a fact, I bring forward the religious pictures of the Spanish school, remarkable for the fulness of the contours, the brightness of the colouring, and yet no one will deny that these Spanish paintings breathe the most spiritualised, the most ideal Christianity; and that their authors were not less imbued with faith than the celebrated masters of our days, who have embraced Catholicism at Rome in order to be able to paint its sacred symbols with a fervour and ingenuous spontaneity which, according to their idea, only the ecstasy of faith can give. The true character of Christian art does not reside in thinness and paleness of the body, but in a certain effervescence of the soul, which neither the musician nor the painter can appropriate to himself either by baptism or by study; and in this respect I find in the ‘Stabat’ of Rossini a more truly Christian character than in the ‘Paulus’ of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, an oratorio which the adversaries of Rossini point to as a model of the Christian style. Heaven preserve me from wishing to express by that the least blame against a master so full of merits as the composer of ‘Paulus;’ and the author of these letters is less likely than any one to wish to criticise the Christian character of the oratorio in question from clerical, or, so to say, pharisaical reasons. I cannot, however, avoid pointing out, that at the age when Mendelssohn commenced Christianity at Berlin (he was only baptised in his thirteenth year), Rossini had already deserted it a little, and had lost himself entirely in the mundane music of operas. Now he has again abandoned the latter, to carry himself back in dreams to the Catholic recollections of his first youth – to the days when he sang as a child in the choir of the Pesaro cathedral, and took part as an acolyte in the service of the holy mass.”
Heine, in his brilliant article, goes on to exalt Rossini (according to his invariable method) by depreciating Mendelssohn; a proceeding for which Rossini would not have thanked him. Nor would Heine himself have been pleased to see the criticism in which he expresses so poetically, and in such an admirable form, the true character of the “Stabat” music, represented by a mere fragment. Still the fragments of some writers are better than the complete articles of others; and the passages in which Heine, as a poetical appreciator, not as a musical critic, points out the error of condemning Rossini’s entrancing music from the gloomy churchwarden point of view, are admirable.
The “Stabat Mater,” was, at one time, regarded as Rossini’s final utterance; but a mass, the production of the last few years of his life, has just been made public, and bids fair to eclipse the fame of the earlier religious work. However, of the “Stabat” it may already be said that the music, as music, whatever significance may be attached to it, will certainly live. It gains every year in popularity, and is at this moment better known than any of Rossini’s operas, except “William Tell” and the “Barber.”
The “Messe Solennelle” (or “Petite Messe Solennelle,” its original title) was performed for the first time in presence of Meyerbeer, Auber, and a certain number of private friends at Paris, in the year 1864. The composer had not at that time arranged it for the orchestra, and the instrumentation of the mass occupied him at intervals almost until the autumn of last year, when, at the age of seventy-seven, he was attacked by the illness which carried him off.
Rossini had the happiness not to survive his capacity for production, – far less his reputation, which the performance throughout Europe of his last work cannot fail to enhance. He was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.
Incomparably the greatest Italian composer of the century, and the greatest of all Italian composers for the stage, he will be known until some very great change takes place in our artistic civilisation by at least three great works in three very different styles – “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” a comic opera of the year 1813, “Guillaume Tell,” a serious opera of the year 1829, and the “Stabat Mater,” a religious poem of the year 1841.
LIST OF ROSSINI’S WORKS,
WITH THE DATE OF THEIR PRODUCTION IN PUBLIC
1. Il Pianto d’Armonia. Cantata, 1808.
2. Orchestral Symphony, 1809.
3. Quartet for Stringed Instruments, 1809.
4. La Cambiale di Matrimonio. Opera, 1810.
5. L’Equivoco Stravagante. Opera, 1811.
6. Didone Abbandonata. Cantata, 1811.
7. Demetrio e Polibio. Opera, 1811.
8. L’Inganno Felice. Opera, 1812.
9. Ciro in Babilonia. Opera, 1812.
10. La Scala di Seta. Opera, 1812.
11. La Pietra del Paragone. Opera, 1812.
12. L’Occasione fa il Ladro. Opera, 1812.
13. Il Figlio per Azzardo. Opera, 1813.
14. Tancredi. Opera, 1813.
15. L’Italiana in Algeri. Opera, 1813.
16. L’Aureliano in Palmira. Opera, 1814.
17. Egle e Irene. Cantata (unpublished), 1814.
18. Il Turco in Italia. Opera, 1814.
19. Elisabetta. Opera, 1815.
20. Torvaldo e Dorliska. Opera, 1816.
21. Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Opera, 1816.
22. La Gazetta. Opera, 1816.
23. Otello. Opera, 1816.
24. Teti e Peleo. Cantata, 1816.
25. Cenerentola. Opera, 1817.
26. La Gazza Ladra. Opera, 1817.
27. Armide. Opera, 1817.
28. Adelaide di Borgogna. Opera, 1818.
29. Mosè. Opera, 1818.
30. Adina. Opera (written for Lisbon), 1818.{344}
31. Ricciardo e Zoraïde. Opera, 1818.
32. Ermione. Opera, 1819.
33. Eduardo e Cristina. Opera, 1819.
34. La Donna del Lago. Opera, 1819.
35. Cantata in honour of the King of Naples. 1819.
36. Bianca e Faliero. Opera, 1820.
37. Maometto II. Opera, 1820.
38. Cantata in honour of the Emperor of Austria. 1820.
39. Matilda di Sabran. Opera, 1821.
40. La Riconoscenza. Cantata, 1821.
41. Zelmira. Opera, 1822.
42. Il Vero Omaggio. Cantata, 1822.
43. Semiramide. Opera, 1823.
44. Il Viaggio a Reims. Opera, 1825.
45. Le Siège de Corinthe. Opera, 1826.
46. Moïse. Opera, 1827.
47. Le Comte Ory. Opera, 1828.
48. Guillaume Tell. Opera, 1829.
49. Les Soirées Musicales. Douze morceaux de chant, 1840.
50. Quatre Ariettes Italiennes, 1841.
51. Stabat Mater. 1842.
52. La Foi, l’Espérance et la Charité. Trois chœurs, 1843.
53. Stances à Pie IX., 1847.
54. Messe Solennelle, 1869.