Gioachino Rossini gained fame and developed his compositional style during his Neapolitan years (1815-1822), yet many of these works were once thought to be lost. The discovery of the manuscripts of several non-operatic Neapolitan works (the cantata Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo, four other cantatas, and the Messa di Gloria) reveals much about Rossini's compositional style. All of these works, especially Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo, contain a significant amount of self-borrowed material, most likely because they were made hastily for specific occasions. The self-borrowing comes in several types: setting a melody to a new voice part, borrowing from two separate sources, keeping the same medium (such as deriving a chorus from another chorus), changing the medium (such as deriving a trio from a chorus), modeling on an earlier composition, and paraphrasing an earlier melody into a new melody.

Works: Rossini: Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo (317-25), Cantata for One Voice and Chorus, Omaggio umiliato a Sua Maestà (317-318, 325-327, 331), Cantata for Three Voices and Chorus (317, 328-330), Messa di Gloria (318, 331-39).

Sources: Rossini: Sigismondo (321), Ciro in Babilonia (321), L'Equivoco stravagante (321), Tenor concerto aria (321), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (321-25, 331), Torvaldo e Dorliska (321-22), Aureliano in Palmira (321), Il Turco in Italia (321), La Scale di Seta (321-22), Demetrio e Polibio (323), Cantata for One Voice and Chorus (330), Matilde di Shabran (331), Mosè in Egitto (336); Haydn: Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (329).

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Mark Chilla