La forza del destino [antikvár]

GIUSEPPE VERDI, OVERTURES It is not accidental, that Verdi is represented in this collection only by few works, the number of which is not in relation to the extraordinary fertility of his entire production. The reason however is evident. This collection after its whole construction, is gravitating in instrumental chamber-and orchestra music, while Verdi's aim was to be exclusively a stage composer, proceeding in this regard much farther than most of his special colleagues, chiefly than his great contemporanian and artistic counterpart Richard Wagner. Verdi not only declined any activity in instrumental music—as is seems, he even considered his string quartet, his only instrumental work, as a sort of deviation later on—but he deemed it positively unitalian, origined from German influence. Only vocal, chiefly stage music, is rooting in the Italian popular soul after his opinion; therein his country was to remain leading, all other kinds of music leaving to Germans and other nations. We may consider this as onesided, but it is historically founded, and we are to realize, that Verdi in no way was adherent of stationariness, but on the contrary of reasonable progress, confined however to that species, which seemed to him, the full-bloi^ed Italian, as a sort of mission for his nation. It is known, that Verdi, just like Wagner—both were born in the same year,—followed the aim, to replace the so-called Grand Opera, the st^le which had been created by Spontini, Meyerbeer and others, and which then since about two decades ruled the stage world, bv an actual new creation. But just what is said above, teaches, that he was to proceed on quite different, downright opposite ways as Wagner. Even though also for the latter, except some works of his youth, the drama formed the almost exclusive contents of his life prodution, this however would not be imaginable without a fundamental knowlegde of the entire musical literature as well as of the technics and capacity of the single instruments ; thence Wagner's unprecedented and never attained ability of the orchestral apparatus, which is always primary and leading against human voice, and the exponent of the musical action. Thence Wagner's grandiose orchestral preludes and mter-ludes ! Quite different Verdi ! For him, who saw in his countrymen the people of singers, the human voice was throughout to be superordinated and served by the orchestra. Only in accordance with this purpose he cared for it, but not as—seen from the standpoint of that time—modern symphony orchestra, which was not interesting for him. Thus his works succeeded to be rich of beautiful vocal parts, but poor,of orchestral pieces, and even the overture, which was in general use until his time, was abolished by him by and by, and numerous successors have followed this way. There are but few works, Verdi has written concertizing overtures for, the most important of which : those to "Nabucco", "La Forza del Destino", "I Vespri Sidliani", were to be included, to this collection. Certainly Verd'is overture considerably deviates from that one of the classics, which essentially was a s^phonic allegro movement with development, reprise, etc., often with