Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

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.