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Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) composed his Petite Messe Solennelle in 1863, some 30 years after he completed the last of his 39 operas. He was living at his villa in Passy, then a suburb of Paris. The first performance of the piece was given in 1864 at the town house of the dedicatee, the Countess Louise Pillet Will. This original version was scored for two pianos, harmonium, four soloists and a choir of twelve. Those who attended agreed that, for all Rossini’s protestations, the Mass represented a magnificent feat of creative self-renewal for the seventy-one-year-old composer. The first public performance was in Paris on 28 February 1869, three months after the composer’s death, on the 78th anniversary of the composer’s birth (he was actually born in a leap year on 29 February). This was a fully orchestrated version which Rossini had worked on a couple of years before his death. He described it as ‘the last of my sins of old age’. The extended work is a solemn Mass, but Rossini ironically labelled it petite (little). He wrote on the manuscript copy (now in the Fondatione Rossini, Pesaro) – ‘Dear Lord, here it is finished, this poor little mass. Have I just written sacred music, or rather, sacrilegious music? I was born for opera buffa (comic opera), as you well know. Not much technique, a little bit of heart, that's all. Blessings to you and grant me Paradise.’ A curious detail about this work is that it is probably the only piece of music to include an ‘allegro cristiano’ (Christian allegro) which is the tempo marking for the ‘Credo’ movement. Our performance will be closer to the original chamber version – four soloists, choir, piano and harmonium. We think that the Mass is neither particularly solemn, nor petite, but know it’s great fun both to listen to and to sing. Come to our concert and find out for yourselves! Tickets available online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/reading-haydn-choir ; or send an email to rdghaydnchoir+tickets@gmail.com: |
