Notes for: July 23, 2013
This quartet is an arrangement for flute, violin, viola and cello of one of the six string sonatas for two violins, cello and double bass that Rossini produced at the age of 12. The story behind these pieces is more complicated than the music itself.
Like Mozart and Mendelssohn, Rossini was a child prodigy. Both his parents were musicians – his father was a brass player and his mother a singer – and they spotted his musical talent at an early age. He learned the horn from his father and singing from his mother, and by the time he was ten he was also proficient on the piano and violin.
When he was eleven, he was given access to the music library of a wealthy family in Ravenna, where he studied the works of Mozart and Haydn and started teaching himself to be a composer. At 13, he began singing in churches and in minor opera roles in Ravenna and Bologna. In the latter activity, he began to master the craft of opera writing, which led to his eventual output of nearly 40 operas.
In his twelfth year, Rossini spent part of the summer in the village of Conventello, near Ravenna, as the house guest of a wealthy young merchant and landowner, Agostino Triossi. Triossi played the double bass, and for his host’s performance Rossini wrote six sonatas for two violins, cello and double bass. Rossini himself played the second violin part, and the remaining parts were assigned to Triossi’s cousins. Years later Rossini claimed to have composed the six sonatas in three days, adding that he had no further use for them.
The sonatas were not published during Rossini’s lifetime, and it was thought that the manuscripts had been lost. After World War II, however, the manuscripts were discovered in the Library of Congress. Scholars then realized that they had known most of this music all along – five of them had been published in 1825-26 as arrangements for string quartet, and in that instrumentation they had won considerable popularity. The sonatas were now restored to their original form, and were published in Germany along with this arrangement for flute quartet – that is, flute plus violin, viola and cello -- and for wind quintet.
The B Flat Major Quartet, with the flute, is a species of quartet known as “Quatuor Brilliant” or “Quartet Concertante,” used by Mozart and Haydn and that combine a wind instrument with a string trio. In this type of quartet, the flute functions more as a soloist, with the strings in the capacity of accompanists. Though the work is not without interplay among the four voices, the flute is definitely the featured player.
However, for a twelve-year-old, the sonata is indeed precocious in its fluency, interplay of instruments, and mastery of simple forms. The first movement, allegro vivace, offers a full sonata form with two themes, a brief development, and the themes’ recapitulation. Young Rossini had studied his Haydn.
The second movement, andantino, is a short song-without-words, with two strains. The first is surprisingly serious for a youngster. The second reflects the boy’s early command of the Italian opera buffa style, translated into instrumental terms that he was to master by the age of 20.
The third movement, allegretto, is a rondo whose lively main tune returns as a refrain after two contrasting episodes. The second episode includes a solo for the double bass testing Signore Triossi’s agility. The second reappearance of the main theme leads to a brief coda to wind things up.