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Year 1841 (MDCCCXLI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Events[link]

January–March[link]

• January 20 – Charles Elliot of Britain and Qishan of the Qing Dynasty agree to the Convention of Chuenpee.
• January 26 – Britain occupies Hong Kong. Later in the year, the first census of the island records a population of about 7,500.^[1]
• January 27 – The active volcano Mount Erebus in Antarctica is discovered and named by James Clark Ross.^[2]
• January 28 – Ross discovers the "Victoria Barrier", later known as the Ross Ice Shelf.
• January 30 – A fire ruins and destroys two-thirds of the then villa (now city) of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
• February 4 – First known reference to Groundhog Day, in the diary of a James Morris.
• February 10 – Act of Union (1840) proclaimed in Canada.
• February 11 – The two colonies of The Canadas are merged into the United Province of Canada.
• February 18 – The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins and lasts until March 11.
• February 20 – The Governor Fenner, carrying emigrants to the United States, sinks off Holyhead (Wales) with the loss of 123 lives.
• March 4 – Martin Van Buren is succeeded as President of the United States by William Henry Harrison.
• March 9 – Amistad: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the case that the Africans who seized control of the ship had been taken into slavery illegally.
• March 12 – SS President under the command of the legendary captain Richard Roberts founders in rough seas with all passengers and crew lost.

April–June[link]

• April 4 – President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia, becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and at one month, the American president with the shortest term served. He is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler, who becomes the tenth President of the United States.
• April 6 – President John Tyler is sworn in.
• May – Start of the Sino-Sikh war.
• May 3 – New Zealand becomes a British colony.^[3]
• May 11 – Lt. Charles Wilkes lands at Fort Nisqually in Puget Sound.
• June 6 (Sunday)
  • United Kingdom Census held, the first to record names and approximate ages of every household member and to be administered nationally.
  • Marian Hughes becomes the first woman to take religious vows in communion with the Anglican Province of Canterbury since the Reformation, making them privately to E. B. Pusey in Oxford.^[4]
• June 28 – Ballet Giselle first presented by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris, France.

July–September[link]

• July – Scottish missionary David Livingstone arrives at Kuruman in the Northern Cape, his first posting in Africa.
• July 5 – Thomas Cook arranges his first railway excursion, in England.^[3]
• July 17 – First edition of the humorous magazine Punch published in London.^[5]
• July 18 (Sunday) – The sixth bishop of Calcutta, Daniel Wilson, and Dr. James Taylor, Civil Surgeon at Dhaka, establish the first modern educational institution in the Indian subcontinent, Dhaka College.
• July 20 – The Mercantile Agency (ancestor of Dun & Bradstreet is founded in New York City by Lewis Tappan.
• August 16 – U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
• September 24 – The Britain annexes Sarawak from Brunei; James Brooke is appointed rajah.

October–December[link]

• October 16 – Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, by Rev. Thomas Liddell, who carries a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria and becomes the school's first principal.
• October 30 – A fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds worth of damage.^[6]
• November 13 – Scottish surgeon James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine in Manchester, which leads to his study of the phenomenon that he (Braid) eventually calls hypnotism.
• December 23 – First Anglo-Afghan War: At a meeting with the Afghan general Akbar Khan, the British diplomat Sir William Hay Macnaghten is shot dead at close quarters.

Date unknown[link]

• Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross additionally discovers the Ross Sea, Victoria Land and Mount Terror.
• John Augustus develops the concept of probation.
• The city of Dallas, Texas is founded by John Neely Bryan.
• Fordham University is founded in The Bronx by the Society of Jesus. Its name at its founding is St. John's College.
• The Scroll and Key secret society of Yale University is established.

Ongoing[link]

• First Opium War (1839–1842)
• First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)

Births[link]

January–June[link]

• January 7 – Bernadette Soubirous, visionary from Lourdes (d. 1879)
• January 14 – Berthe Morisot, French painter (d. 1895)
• January 23 – Constant Coquelin, French actor,Cyrano de Bergerac (d. 1909)
• January 25 – Jackie Fisher, British admiral (d. 1920)
• January 28 – Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh explorer and journalist (d. 1904)
• February 2 – François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (d. 1912)
• February 4 – Clément Ader, French engineer, inventor, and airplane pioneer (d. 1926)
• February 18 – Gergely Luthár, Hungarian Slovene writer (d. 1925)
• February 25 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter (d. 1919)
• March 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1935)
• April 9 – William George Aston, British consular official (d. 1911)
• April 10 – Adolfo Rivadeneyra, Spanish traveler, diplomat and writer (d.1882)
• April 13 – Louis-Ernest Barrias, French sculptor (d. 1905)
• May 10 – James Gordon Bennett, Jr., American newspaper publisher (d. 1918)
• June 1 – Edward Lyon Buchwalter, Captain of American Civil War, President of Superior Drill Company, President of American Seeding Machine Company and first President of The Citizens National Bank of Springfield, Ohio (d. 1933)

July–December[link]

• August 25 – Emil Kocher, Swiss medical researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1917)
• September 8 – Antonín Dvořák, Czech composer (d. 1904)
• September 8 – Charles J. Guiteau, American lawyer and assassin of James A. Garfield (d. 1882)
• September 28 – Georges Clemenceau, French statesman (d. 1929)
• October 7 – King Nicholas I of Montenegro (d. 1921)
• October 16 – Prince Hirobumi Ito, Japanese governor of Korea (d. 1909)
• November 6 – Nelson W. Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island (d. 1915)
• November 6 – Armand Fallières, French President (d. 1931)
• November 9 – King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (d. 1910)
• November 13 – Edward Burd Grubb, Jr., American Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General (d.1913)
• November 20 – Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
• December 6 – Frédéric Bazille, French painter (d. 1870)
• December 20 – Ferdinand Buisson, French pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1932)

Date unknown[link]

• Hakeem Noor-ud-Din, Muslim scholar and the 1st Caliph of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Islam.

Deaths[link]

January–June[link]

• January 15 – Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot, Baltic German naturalist and traveller (b. 1792)
• February 17 – Ferdinando Carulli, Italian guitarist (b. 1770)
• March 1 – Claude Victor-Perrin, duc de Belluno, French marshal (b. 1764)
• March 12 – Richard Roberts, ship's captain perished while in command of the SS President (famous quote: I'd Go to Sea in a Bathtub) (b. 1803)
• April 4 – William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States (b. 1773)
• April 28 – Peter Chanel, French Roman Catholic missionary (martyred) (b. 1803)
• April 30 – Peter Andreas Heiberg, Danish author and philologist (b. 1758)
• May 20 – Joseph Blanco White, British theologian (b. 1775)
• May 23 – Franz Xaver von Baader, German philosopher and theologian (b. 1765)
• June 1 – David Wilkie, Scottish artist (b. 1785)

July–December[link]

• July – Mary Rogers, the "Beautiful Cigar Girl", American murder victim (b. c. 1820)
• August 24 – Theodore Edward Hook, English author (b. 1788)
• September 25 – John Chandler, American politician (b. 1762)
• December 4 – David Daniel Davis, British physician (b. 1777)
• December 23 – William Hay Macnaghten, Anglo-Indian diplomat (b. 1793)

References[link]

Early photograph of Gioachino Rossini (Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)

Gioachino Antonio Rossini^[1] (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoaˈkiːno anˈtɔːnjo rosˈsiːni] (Giovacchino Antonio Rossini in the baptismal certificate)^[2] (29 February 1792 – 13 November 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 operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon 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.^[3]

Early life[link]

Portrait of Gioachino Rossini in 1820, International Museum and Library of Music, Bologna

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. 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, Rossini's father was sent to prison in 1799 where he remained until June 1800.^[4] 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 Giuseppe Prinetti, originally from 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 subject for ridicule in the eyes of the young Rossini.^[5]

Education[link]

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, play accompaniments on the piano and 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, which dated from 1804 when the composer was twelve, were found in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Often transcribed for string orchestra, these sonatas reveal the young composer's affinity for Haydn and Mozart, already showing signs of operatic tendencies, 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 that 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[link]

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.

Gioachino Rossini, painted c. 1815 by Vincenzo Camuccini

By the age of 21, Rossini had established himself as the idol of the Italian opera public. He 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 in Bologna, where Domenico Barbaia, the impresario of the Naples theatre, contracted an agreement that made him musical director of the Teatro di 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, he said to the Director Niccolò Zingarelli, "My compliments Maestro – your young pupil Mercadante begins where we finish."^[6]

Some older composers in Naples, notably Zingarelli and Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer, but all hostility was rendered futile by the enthusiasm that 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.

[edit] The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Isabella Colbran

Rossini's most famous opera was produced on 20 February 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 Ludwig van Beethoven, who was then aged 51, deaf, cantankerous and in failing health. Communicating in writing, Beethoven noted: “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.”^[3]

Marriage and mid-career[link]

Caricature by H. Mailly on the cover of Le Hanneton, July 4, 1867

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 refuse, 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[link]

Gioachino Rossini, photographed by Félix Nadar, 1858

During his Paris years, between 1824 and 1829, Rossini created the comic opera Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The production of the latter 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 13th-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.^[7]

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[link]

Gioachino Rossini, photographed by Étienne Carjat, 1865

His first wife died in 1845, and on 16 August 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 he hosted many artistic and literary figures. 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 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 works intended for private performance. These included his Péchés de vieillesse ("Sins of Old Age"), which 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 Beethoven and Chopin, with many flashes of the composer’s long buried desire for serious, academic composition. He died at the age of 76 from pneumonia at his country house at Passy on Friday, 13 November 1868. 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[link]

Rossini's now-empty tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

Rossini was a foreign associate of the institute, grand officer of the Legion of Honour and recipient of innumerable orders.

Immediately after Rossini's death, Giuseppe Verdi proposed to collaborate with twelve other Italian composers on a Requiem for Rossini, to be performed on the first anniversary of Rossini's 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 its world premiere.

In 1900 Giuseppe Cassioli created a monument to Rossini in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence.^[8]

Rossiniana[link]

Mauro Giuliani (who died in 1829) wrote six sets of variations for guitar on themes by Rossini, Opp. 119–124 (c. 1820-1828). Each set was called "Rossiniana", and collectively they are called "Rossiniane". This was the first known tribute by one composer to another using a title of the form -ana.

In 1925, Ottorino Respighi orchestrated four pieces from Péchés de vieillesse as the suite Rossiniana (he had earlier used pieces from the same collection as the basis of his ballet La Boutique fantasque).

Notes[link]

Portrait of Gioachino Rossini by Francesco Hayez, 1870.
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

In his compositions, Rossini plagiarized freely from himself, a common practice among deadline-pressed opera composers of the time. Few of his operas are without such admixtures, frankly introduced in the form of arias or overtures. For example, in Il Barbiere there is an aria for the Count (often omitted) "Cessa di più resistere", which Rossini used (with minor changes) in the cantata Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo and in La Cenerentola (the cabaletta for Angelina's rondo is almost unchanged). Moreover, four of his best known overtures (La cambiale di matrimonio, Tancredi, La Cenerentola and The Barber of Seville) share operas apart from those with which they are most famously associated.

A characteristic mannerism in Rossini's orchestral scoring is a long, steady building of sound over an ostinato figure, creating "tempests in teapots by beginning in a whisper and rising to a flashing, glittering storm,"^[9] which earned him the nickname of "Signor Crescendo".

A few of Rossini's operas remained popular throughout his lifetime and continuously since his demise; others were resurrected from semi-obscurity in the last half of the 20th century, during the so-called "bel canto revival."

Rossini's final resting place, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence

According to Herbert Weinstock's 1968 biography (see below), the composer's estate was valued at 2.5 million francs upon his death in 1868, the equivalent of about 1.4 million US dollars. Apart from some individual legacies in favour of his wife and relatives,^[10] Rossini willed his entire estate to the Commune of Pesaro.^[11] The inheritance was invested to establish a Liceo Musicale (Conservatory) in the town. When, in 1940, the Liceo was put under state control and turned into the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini", the corporate body to which Rossini’s inheritance had been conveyed, assumed the style of Fondazione G. Rossini. The ends of the institution which is still in full activity, are to support the Conservatorio initiatives and to promote the study and the spread worldwide of the figure, the memory and the works of Rossini. The institution has collaborated since the beginning with the Rossini Opera Festival.^[12]

Rossini's estate also provided funding for the Prix Rossini, a prize to be awarded to young composers and librettist. The provision took effect in 1878 on the death of his widow and was awarded by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Prize-winning works were produced by the Société des Concerts, Institut de France, from 1885 to 1911.^[13]

Works[link]

References[link]

Notes

Sources

• Faul, Michel (2009), Les aventures militaires, littéraires et autres d'Étienne de Jouy, Editions Seguier, France, March 2009, ISBN 978-2-84049-556-7
• Fisher, Burton D., The Barber of Seville (Opera Classics Library Series). Grand Rapids: Opera Journeys, 2005. ISBN 1-930841-96-5 ISBN 1-930841-96-5
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Material now in the public domain is incorporated into this article.
• Gossett, Philip, "Rossini, Gioachino" in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, 17 November 2009
• Osborne, Richard, Rossini: His Life and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-1-55553-088-4
• Holoman, D. Kern (2004), The Societ́e ́des concerts du conservatoire, 1828-1967. University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23664-5 ISBN 9780520236646
• Osborne, Richard, "Rossini" in The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1726 (December 1986), 691 (Musical Times Publications Ltd.) Access online
• (Italian) Radiciotti, Giuseppe, Gioacchino Rossini: vita documentata, opere ed influenza su l'arte, Tivoli, Majella, 1927-1929
• Steen, Michael, The Lives and Times of the Great Composers NY: Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 1-84046-679-0 ISBN 1-84046-679-0
• Weinstock, Herbert, Rossini: A Biography. New York, Knopf, 1968 ISBN 0-87910-102-4 ISBN 0-87910-102-4

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gioachino Rossini

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gioachino Rossini

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Gioachino Antonio Rossini

• Gioachino Rossini biography
• Fondazione G. Rossini
• List and text of the songs on the website of the German Rossini Society
• Rossini Opera Festival
• Rossini in Wildbad – Belcanto opera festival
• The Center for Italian Opera Studies: Rossini critical edition
• [3] – Riccardo Caramella performs Quatre Mendiants, Quatre hors d'oeuvres

Texts, books

• Memoirs of Rossini by Marie Henri Beyle, Gioacchino Rossini, published in 1824
• Books with "Rossini" as author (at Google Books)
• Books with occurrences of "Rossini" (at Google Books)
• Texts with occurrences of "Rossini" (at archive.org)
• Works by or about Gioachino Rossini in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• La vie de Rossini (fr) by Stendhal, tome I (at gutenberg.org)
• La vie de Rossini (fr) by Stendhal, tome II (at gutenberg.org)

Scores (sheetmusic)

• Free scores by Gioachino Rossini in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Rossini at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Gioachino Rossini in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Gioachino Rossini

Historical recordings

• Rossini cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Films

• Gioachino Rossini at the Internet Movie Database

Performance

• Recent and future performances of Rossini operas from Operabase

Images

• 1867 Caricature of Rossini by André Gill

Drawing of Clara Wieck Schumann

Clara Schumann (née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was the composer Robert Schumann. She and her husband encouraged Johannes Brahms, and she was the first pianist to give public performances of some of Brahms' works, notably the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.

Early life[link]

Clara Wieck, from an 1835 lithograph

Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich and Marianne Wieck (née Tromlitz).^[1] Her parents divorced when she was four years old; Clara was raised by her father. One of her father's students would scare Clara and dress up as ghosts but when she was older, she married him.^[1] In March 1828, at the age of eight, the young Clara Wieck performed at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of a mental hospital at Colditz Castle, and met another gifted young pianist invited to the musical evening named Robert Schumann, nine years older than her. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to discontinue his studies of the law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father, Friedrich Wieck. While taking lessons, he took rooms in the Wieck household, staying about a year.

In 1830, at the age of eleven, Clara left on a concert tour to Paris via other European cities, accompanied by her father. She gave her first solo concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. In Weimar, she performed a bravura piece by Henri Herz for Goethe, who presented her with a medal with his portrait and a written note saying, "For the gifted artist Clara Wieck." During that tour, Niccolò Paganini was in Paris, and he offered to appear with her.^[2] However, her Paris recital was poorly attended as many people had fled the city due to an outbreak of cholera.^[2]

At the age of 18, Clara Wieck performed a series of recitals in Vienna from December 1837 to April 1838.^[3] Austria's leading dramatic poet, Franz Grillparzer, wrote a poem entitled "Clara Wieck and Beethoven" after hearing Wieck perform the Appassionata Sonata during one of these recitals.^[3] Wieck performed to sell-out crowds and laudatory critical reviews; Benedict Randhartinger, a friend of Franz Schubert, gave Wieck an autograph copy of Schubert's Erlkönig, inscribing it "To the celebrated artist, Clara Wieck."^[3] Frédéric Chopin described her playing to Franz Liszt, who came to hear one of Wieck's concerts and subsequently "praised her extravagantly in a letter that was published in the Parisian Revue et Gazette Musicale and later, in translation, in the Leipzig journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik."^[4] On 15 March, Wieck was named a Königliche und Kaiserliche Kammervirtuosin ("Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuoso"), Austria's highest musical honor.^[4]

In her early years her repertoire, selected by her father, was showy and popular, in the style common to the time, with works by Kalkbrenner, Henselt, Thalberg, Herz, Pixis, Czerny, and her own compositions. As she matured, however, becoming more established and planning her own programs, she began to play works by the new Romantic composers, such as Chopin, Mendelssohn and, of course, Robert Schumann, as well as the great, less showy, more "difficult" composers of the past, such as Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. She also frequently appeared in chamber music recitals of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms.^[2]

Later career[link]

Clara Schumann's reputation brought her into contact with the leading musicians of the day, including Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt. She also met violinist Joseph Joachim who became one of her frequent performance partners.

Clara Schumann, "One of the most soulful and famous pianists of the day," said Edvard Grieg.

Clara Schumann often took charge of the finances and general household affairs due to Robert's mental instability. Part of her responsibility included making money, which she did by giving concerts, although she continued to play throughout her life not only for the income, but because she was a concert artist by training and by nature. Robert, while admiring her talent, wanted a traditional wife to bear children and make a happy home, which in his eyes and the eyes of society were in direct conflict with the life of a performer. Furthermore, while she loved touring, Robert hated it.

After Robert's death (July 29, 1856), Clara devoted herself principally to the interpretation of his works. But when she first visited England in 1856 largely through the good offices of William Sterndale Bennett, the English composer and friend of her late husband, the critics received Robert's music with a chorus of disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and continued her visits annually, with the exception of four seasons, until 1882. She also appeared there each year from 1885 to 1888.

She played a particular role in restoring Brahms's D minor concerto to the general repertory; it had fallen out of favour after its premiere, and was only rehabilitated in the 1870s, thanks mainly to the efforts of Clara Schumann and Brahms himself.^[2]

She was initially interested in the works of Liszt, but later developed an outright hostility to him. She ceased to play any of his works; she suppressed her husband's dedication to Liszt of his Fantasie in C major when she published Schumann's complete works; and she refused to attend a Beethoven centenary festival in Vienna in 1870 when she heard that Liszt and Richard Wagner would be participating.^[2]

She was particularly scathing of Wagner. Of Tannhäuser, she said that he "wears himself out in atrocities"; she described Lohengrin as "horrible"; and she wrote that Tristan und Isolde was "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life".^[2]

In 1878 she was appointed teacher of the piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, a post she held until 1892, and in which she contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

She held Anton Bruckner, whose 7th Symphony she heard in 1885, in very low esteem. She wrote to Brahms, describing it as "a horrible piece". But she was more impressed with Richard Strauss's early Symphony in F minor in 1887.^[2]

Clara Schumann played her last public concert in Frankfurt on March 12, 1891. The last work she played was Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, in the piano-duet version.

She suffered a stroke on March 26, 1896, dying on May 20, at age 76. She is buried at Bonn's Alter Friedhof (Old Cemetery) with her husband.

She was portrayed onscreen by Katharine Hepburn in the 1947 film Song of Love, in which Paul Henreid played Robert Schumann and Robert Walker starred as a young Johannes Brahms.

She was also portrayed more recently in a German film named simply "Geliebte Clara" in 2008 taking a look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

Legacy[link]

Although for many years after her death Clara Schumann was not widely recognized as a composer, as a pianist she made an impression which lasts until today. She was one of the first pianists to perform from memory, making that the standard for concertizing. Trained by her father to play by ear and to memorize, she gave public performances from memory as early as age thirteen, a fact noted as something exceptional by her reviewers.^[5]

She was also instrumental in changing the kind of programs expected of concert pianists. In her early career, before her marriage to Robert, she played what was then customary, mainly bravura pieces designed to showcase the artist's technique, often in the form of arrangements or variations on popular themes from operas, written by virtuosos such as Thalberg, Herz, or Henselt. And, as it was also customary to play one's own compositions, she included at least one of her own works in every program, works such as her Variations on a Theme by Bellini (Op. 8) and her popular Scherzo (Op. 10). However, after settling into married life, probably under the influence of Robert, her performances focused almost exclusively on more serious music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Schumann.^[6]

Clara Schumann's influence has reached us as well through her teaching, which emphasized a singing tone and expression, with technique entirely subordinated to the intentions of the composer. One of her students, Mathilde Verne, carried her teaching to England where she taught, among others, Solomon; while another of her students, Carl Friedberg, carried the tradition to the Juilliard School in America, where his students included Malcolm Frager and Bruce Hungerford.^[7]

And, of course, Clara was instrumental in getting the works of Robert Schumann recognized, appreciated and added to the repertoire. She promoted him tirelessly, beginning when his music was unknown or disliked, when the only other important figure in music to play Schumann occasionally was Liszt, and continuing until the end of her long career.

Character[link]

Clara Schumann was the main breadwinner for her family through giving concerts and teaching, and she did most of the work of organizing her own concert tours. She refused to accept charity when a group of musicians offered to put on a benefit concert for her. In addition to raising her own large family, when one of her children became incapacitated, she took on responsibility for raising her grandchildren. During the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849, she famously walked into the city through the front lines, defying a pack of armed men who confronted her, rescued her children, then walked back out of the city through the dangerous areas again.

Her family life was punctuated by tragedy. Four of her eight children and her husband predeceased her, and her husband and one of her sons ended their lives in insane asylums. Her first son Emil died in 1847, aged only one. Her husband Robert had a mental collapse, attempted suicide in 1854, and was committed to an insane asylum for the last two years of his life. In 1872 her daughter Julie died, leaving two small children. In 1879, her son Felix, aged 25, died. Her son Ludwig suffered from mental illness, like his father, and, in her words, had to be "buried alive" in an institution. Her son Ferdinand died at the age of 43 and she was required to raise his children. She herself became deaf in later life and she often needed a wheelchair.^[2]

Clara's portrait was also used on a front of a 100DM bill.

Music of Clara Schumann[link]

As part of the broad musical education given her by her father, Clara Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. At age fourteen she wrote her piano concerto, with some help from Robert Schumann, and performed it at age sixteen at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Mendelssohn conducting.

As she grew older, however, she lost confidence in herself as a composer, writing, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" In fact, Wieck-Schumann's compositional output decreased notably after she reached the age of thirty-six. The only compositions that exist from later in her life are cadenzas written to two concertos–one by Mozart and the other by Beethoven–and some sketches for a piece that never reached completion. ^[8] Today her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded. Her works include songs, piano pieces, a piano concerto, a piano trio, choral pieces, and three Romances for violin and piano. Inspired by her husband's birthday, the three Romances were composed in 1853 and dedicated to Joseph Joachim, who performed them for George V of Hanover. He declared them a "marvellous, heavenly pleasure."

Wieck-Schumann was the authoritative editor of her husband's works for the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel.

This section needs reference marks.

Quotations[link]

"Composing gives me great pleasure...there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound."

—Clara Schumann.

"Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out."

—Robert Schumann in the joint diary of Robert and Clara Schumann.

Works[link]

Clara Schumann's published works are listed below by date of publication. Twenty-five additional unpublished or lost works may be found in Reich, Nancy B., Clara Schumann, The Artist and The Woman, appendix.

• 1831· Quatre Polonaises pour le pianoforte, Op. 1.
• 1832· 9 Caprices en forme de valse pour le piano, Op. 2. Dedicated to Madame Henriette Foerster, née Weicke.
• 1833· Romance variée pour le piano, Op. 3 (C major). Dedicated to Monsieur Robert Schumann.
• 1834· Walzer fűr Gesang und Klavier. Song with text by Johann Peter Lyser. Published in collection Lyser's Liedersammlung.
• 1835· Valses romantiques pour le piano, Op. 4. Dedicated to Madame Emma Eggers née Garlichs. The Valses were orchestrated but none of the instrumental parts survive.
• 1835· Quatre pieces caractéristiques, Op. 5 (1. Le Sabbat; 2. Caprice à la Boléro; 3. Romance: 4. Ballet des Revenants). Dedicated to Mademoiselle Sophie Kaskel.
• 1836· 6 Soirées musicales, Op. 6 (1. Toccatina in A minor; 2. Nocturne in F Major; 3. Mazurka in G minor; 4. Ballade in D minor; 5. Mazurka in G major; 6. Polonaise in A minor). Dedicated to Madame Henriette Voigt.
• 1836· Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7: Premier concert pour le piano-forte avec accompagnement d'orchestre (ou de quintour). (1 Allegro maestoso; 2 Romanze. Andante non troppo con grazia; 3 Finale. Allegro non troppo; allegro molto). Dedicated to Monsieur Louis Spohr. A draft exists of the last movement, orchestrated by Robert Schumann and in Schumann's hand.
• 1837· Variations de concert pour le pianoforte, sur la Cavatine du Pirate, de Bellini, Op. 8. Dedicated to Monsieur Adolph Henselt.
• 1838· Impromptu in G major. Souvenir de Vienne.
• 1839· Scherzo No. 1 in D minor, Op. 10.
• 1840· Trois Romances pour le pianoforte, Op. 11 (1. E-flat minor, Andante; 2. G minor. Andante; 3. A major, Moderato). Dedicated to Monsieur Robert Schumann.
• 1841· Am Strande. Song with text by Robert Burns. Published in Neue Zeitung für Musik, July 1841.
• 1841· 3 songs: Zwőlf Gedichte aus F. Rűckert's Liebesfrűling fűr Gesang und pianoforte von Robert und Clara Schumann, Op. 12: 2. Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen; 4. Liebst du um Schönheit; 11. Warum willst du and’re Fragen? (these were published as part of Robert Schumann's Gedichte aus Liebesfrühling, Op. 37)
• 1841· Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage.
• 1842· Piano Sonata in G minor (1. Allegro; 2. Adagio con espressione e ben legato; 3. Scherzo; Trio; 4 Rondo).
• 1843· 6 songs: Sechs lieder mit begleitung des pianoforte, Op. 13: 1. Ihr Bildnis. Ich stand in dunklen Träumen; 2. Sie liebten sich beide; 3. Liebeszauber; 4. Der Mond kommt still gegangen; 5. Ich hab’in deinem Auge; 6. Die stille Lotusblume. Dedicated to Queen Caroline Amalie of Denmark.
• 1843· O weh des Scheidens, das er tat.
• 1844· Impromptu in E major (published in Album du gaulois, 1885).
• 1845· Scherzo No. 2 in C minor, Op. 14: Deuxième scherzo pour le pianoforte, Op. 14. Dedicated to Madame Tutein née Siboni.
• 1845· Quatre pièces fugitives, Op. 15 (1. F major, Larghetto; 2. A minor, In poco agitato; 3. D major, Andante espressivo; 4. G major, Scherzo). Dedicated to Marie Wieck. Scherzo originally composed for unpublished Sonatine.
• 1845· 3 Preludes and Fugues: III Praeludien und fugen für das pianoforte, Op. 16: (1. B flat major; 2. B flat major; 3. D minor).
• 1847· Piano Trio in G minor: Trio fur pianoforte, violine und violoncello, Op. 17: (1. Allegro moderato; 2. Scherzo. Tempo di menuetto; 3. Andante; 4. Allegretto). Some emendations on autograph seem to be by Robert Schumann.
• 1848· Mein Stern ("O du mein Stern"). Song with text by Friederike Serre.
• 1854· Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann: Variationen für das pianoforte über ein thema von Robert Schumann, Op. 20. Dedicated to Robert Schumann.
• 1855· Drei romanzen für pianoforte, Op. 21. Dedicated to Johannes Brahms.
• 1855· Drei romanzen für pianoforte und violine, Op. 22. Dedicated to Joseph Joachim.
• 1855· Sechs lieder aus jucunde von Hermann Rollet, Op. 23 (1. Was weinst du, Blümein?; 2. An einem lichten Morgen; 3. Geheimes Flüstern; 4. Auf einem grünem Hügel; 5. Das ist ein tag; 6. O lust, O lust. Dedicated to Livia Frege.
• 1885· Impromptu. Published in Album du Galois.
• 1870· Cadenzas (2) for Beethoven Piano Concerto in G Major, op. 58.
• 1870· Cadenzas for Beethoven Piano Concerto in C Minor, op. 37.
• 1891· Cadenzas (2) for Mozart Piano Concerto in D Minor (K. 466).
• 1977· Romanze für Clavier. Published in Clara Schumann, Romantische Klaviermusik, vol. 2.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bogousslavsky, J. and M. G. Hennerici, Bäzner, H., Bassetti, C., Neurological disorders in famous artists, Part 3, Karger Publishers, 2010, pp. 101–118.
• Boyd, Melinda. "Gendered Voices: The 'Liebesfrüling' Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann." 19th-Century Music 23 (Autumn 1999): 145–162.
• Gould, John. "What Did They Play? The Changing Repertoire of the Piano Recital from the Beginnings to 1980." The Musical Times 146 (Winter 2005): 61–76.
• Hall, George. "Schumann, Clara (Josephine)." The Oxford Companion to Music [n.d.]. Accessed through Grove Music Online on 30 June 2009.
• Kopiez, Reinhard, Andreas C. Lehmann and Janina Klassen. "Clara Schumann's collection of playbills: A historiometric analysis of life-span development, mobility, and repertoire canonization." Poetics, Volume 37, Issue 1, February 2009: 50–73.
• Litzmann, Berthold. Clara Schumann: An Artist's Life. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. ISBN 0-306-79582-5.
• Burstein, L. Poundie. "Their Paths, Her Ways: Comparison of Text Settings by Clara Schumann and Other Composers." Women and Music — A Journal of Gender and Culture 6 (2002): 11ff. Accessed through the International Index to Music Periodicals on 29 June 2009.
• Rattalino, Piero. Schumann. Robert & Clara. Varese: Zecchini Editore, 2002. ISBN 88-87203-14-8.
• Reich, Nancy B. "Clara Schumann." In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986. ISBN 025201246.
• Reich, Nancy B. Clara Schumann, The Artist and The Woman. Revised edition. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8014-8637-8.
• Reich, Susanna. Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso. 1999. Reprint. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005. ISBN 0-618-55160-3.

External links[link]

• Kreusch-sheet-music.net - Free Scores by Clara Schumann
• Free scores by Clara Schumann at the International Music Score Library Project
• Complete works of Clara Schumann-Wieck.
• Goldenwattle.net - Play about Clara Schumann
• Clara Schumann: Impromptu op.9 "Soirée de Vienne"
• March in Es dur, for piano duet, Clara Schumann's last work in Youtube.com
• Scherzo Nr.2 Op.14 Youtube.com