Today's work is one that hovers at the edge of the established repertoire -- certainly better known now than at any time since it was composed, yet still an unknown quantity to many music lovers.
This work is a paradox -- a monumental masterpiece composed on a small scale, for a small ensemble, a work which encompasses the melodious, the dramatic, and the stylish, and whose composer was uncertain whether he had created a masterwork or a piece of junk -- at least if we take him at his word.
But then, that kind of wavering -- which may have been real or may itself have been a self-mocking joke -- was characteristic of Gioacchino Rossini, one of the most famous composers of opera in the nineteenth century. Later in life, Rossini abandoned the theatre and turned instead to songs, piano pieces, and other small items -- some of which he published under the title "Sins of my Old Age."
There seems to be some validity to the idea that Rossini was genuinely concerned about his stature in the eyes of God as he felt his older age creeping upon him. Certain it is that this "last mortal sin of my old age" was prefaced by a letter to God in which he asked forgiveness because his heart was in the right place even if his music wasn't!
So let's have a look at this greatest of his late "sins": the Petite Messe Solennelle or (literally) "Little Solemn Mass". Scholars remain divided about the title. Was it a literal description of a work written for a chamber ensemble of singers accompanied by 2 pianos (one of which only doubles in the bigger movements) and a harmonium (a domestic-sized chamber organ)? Or was it yet another of the composer's little jokes, since this Petite Messe lasts for 90 minutes in performance?
It's been said -- with some justice -- that to perform this mass you need only a piano, a harmonium, a choir of eight and the four greatest solo singers in the world!
I first encountered this work as a young singer, when our church choir at St. George's Church in North Toronto performed it with one piano and organ. At the time, there was only one recording available, and that was a production of doubtful quality and authenticity (probably pirated at a live concert), presenting the later orchestral version which Rossini was compelled to create himself to block others from doing it for him. At any rate, it was such a thrilling piece to sing that I have never forgotten that experience.
Today, there are a number of commercial recordings made and more concert recordings available on line, and the original score has almost completely (and rightfully) supplanted the later orchestral adaptation.
So what can a music lover expect to find in this 95-minute "little" mass? There are movements where the instruments seem to dance in accompaniment to the singers. There are Italianate operatic solos of the sort you hear in the composer's better-known Stabat Mater -- no shortage of those for Rossini was, first and foremost, a composer for the stage! There are fugues -- fugues which stretch singers and players alike to the limits, and keep them there for minutes on end. There is music of solemnity and music of joy. Through it all, Rossini never loses sight of the fact that he is composing for a private performance in a private chapel. This is definitely not the B Minor Mass nor the Missa Solemnis dressed in a vow of perpetual poverty!
The score is littered with Rossinian musical jokes. One of the best comes at the end of the tenor aria Domine deus, which is in D major. The music modulates slyly to C major, the dominant of F (which is the central key of the entire Gloria) and then sets up every expectation of a conventional dominant-to-tonic resolution -- but ends instead with a thunderous open octave on the dominant C, leading to a remote and tragic F minor for the succeeding Qui tollis. Another good instance is found in the weird modulations that jump out repeatedly during the Sanctus.
Where the music is least "petite" is in the gigantic choral fugues which end the Gloria and Credo respectively. The high-speed, high-energy Cum sancto spiritu of the Gloria in particular winds up with a grandiose peroration in which the music climbs a ladder of rising keys before finally landing back in unadulterated and spectacular F major for the final chords.
The solennelle side is introduced right at the outset by the dark introduction of the Kyrie eleison. The pianos set up an ostinato rhythmic pattern which continues through most of the succeeding movement, propelling the music ceaselessly forwards. The polyphonic Christe eleison for unaccompanied chorus, in its simple austerity, looks backward to the Renaissance -- before the Kyrie returns, ushered in by that remorseless ostinato.
Perhaps the most solennelle movement of the entire score is the instrumental Preludio religioso which precedes the Sanctus. Normally entrusted to a piano, this can be heard in at least one recording played instead on the harmonium. Either way, it's a pure piece of ecclesiastical polyphony which can be taken as Rossini's tribute to the polyphonic writing of Bach.
Among the solos, all others take yield pride of place to the mezzo-soprano's E minor Agnus dei (with chorus) which crowns the entire work. In its place, it inevitably suggests the very different Libera me of Verdi's Requiem in that the audience can easily forget all about the rest of the performance by the time this final solo is over. The pianists accompany with a rhythmic motif that to me always suggests a slow-motion tango, of all things. When the soloist and choir reach the final repetitions of Qui tollis peccata mundi, she keeps ratcheting up the dramatic tension by semitones, high in her range, until the music suddenly erupts into a glorious E major as she sings for the last time the words Dona nobis pacem. But the composer's dramatic master-stroke comes after the singers have finished, in the reiteration of the doubt-tinged instrumental introduction of the movement, before the pianos and harmonium finally, grandly, finish this "little solemn mass" on an emphatic E major chord.
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