The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School

The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School

(1) To present in a connected and historical form a view of the contributions made to Philosophy by English thinkers, together with such biographical details as their life and times may render expedient. To each Philosopher will be assigned a separate volume, giving as comprehensive and detailed a statement of his views and contributions to Philosophy as possible, explanatory rather than critical, opening with a brief biographical sketch, and concluding with a short general summary, and a bibliographical appendix. A CONTEMPORARY of Cimarosa and of Paisiello, his predecessors, but not, except at the very outset of his career, his models, and of Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, his successors, and in an artistic sense his followers, Rossini is a central figure in the nineteenth-century history of Italian music. Lives of Rossini have been published freely enough during the last fifty or sixty years. It but rarely happens, even to the greatest man, to have his biography written or his statue erected during his lifetime. But Rossini lived so long that it seemed impossible to wait for his death; and more than one writer seized upon him when he was still a young man. Perhaps it occurred to the Abb Carpani, the first of Rossini's biographers, that he was already approaching the critical age at which so many great composersnot to speak of painters and poetshad ceased not only to work but to live; Mozart, for instance, Cimarosa, Weber, Hrold, Bellini, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. It has been suggested, indeed, that Rossini might perhaps have wished his career to be measured against those of so many other composers whose days were cut short at about the age he had attained when he produced William Tell. Rossini was but thirty-seven when William Tell, his last work for the stage, and his last work of any importance with the exception of the Stabat Mater was brought out. But when, soon after the production of Semiramide, played for the first time in 1823, Stendhal published that Life of Rossini which is known to be founded almost entirely on the Abb Carpani's work, Rossini, at the age of thirty-one, had already completed the most important portion of his artistic life. Readable, interesting, and in many places charming, Stendhal's Life of Rossini is at the same time meagre, and, worse still, untrustworthy. But there is no reason why a tolerable Life of Rossini, including an account of all the changes and reforms introduced by this composer into Italian opera, should not have been published when he was only thirty-one years of age. There would have been nothing of moment to add to it but a narrative of Rossini's visit to London, of his residence in Paris, and above all, of the circumstances under which he produced William Tell together with his reasonsif they could only be discoveredfor abandoning composition when he had once produced that work. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 38534
Author: Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Release Date: Jan 9, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English