Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/176

164 in the South Kensington Library. He has also published pamphlets on Morlacchi (1878), and Bontempi (1879). [ G. ]

ROSSINI,, one of the brightest musical luminaries of the 19th century was born Wednesday, February 29, 1792, a Pesaro, a small town on the Adriatic, N.W. of Ancona, and was the only child of Giuseppe Rossini of Lugo, and Anna Guidarini of Pesaro. The position of his parents was of the humblest; his father was town-trumpeter (trombadore) and inspector of slaughter-houses, and his mother a baker's daughter, but their life was a happy one, and so irrepressible were the good humour and fun of the town-trumpeter that he was known among his friends as 'the jolly fellow.' The political struggles of 1796, however, invaded even this lowly household; the elder Rossini declared himself for the French, and for republican government, and during the reaction of the Austrian party in the States of the Church was naturally sent to gaol. His wife, thus deprived of her means of subsistence, was driven to turn her voice to account. She went with her little Gioachino to Bologna, and there made her début as 'prima donna buffa' with such success as to procure her engagements in various theatres of the Romagna during the Carnival. Meantime the trombadore had regained his liberty and was engaged as horn player in the bands of the theatres in which his wife sang; the child remaining at Bologna, in the charge of an honest pork butcher, while his parents were occupied in campaigns not unlike those of the 'Roman comique' of Scarron. Such surroundings were hardly favourable to education, and it is not wonderful that Gioachino's learning was confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Music he acquired from a certain Prinetti of Novara, who gave him harpsichord lessons for three years; but the lessons must have been peculiar, for Prinetti was accustomed to play the scale with two fingers only, combined his music-teaching with the sale of liquors, and had the convenient habit of sleeping as he stood. Such a character was a ready butt for the son of a joker like Giuseppe Rossini; and so incorrigible was Gioachino's love of mimicking his master that at length he was taken from Prinetti, and apprenticed to a smith.

Such was his shame at this result and his sorrow at the distress of his mother, that he resolved from that time forward to amend and apply. In Angelo Tesei he fortunately found a clever master, able to make singing and practical harmony interesting to his pupil: in a few months he learned to read at sight, to accompany fairly on the piano, and to sing well enough to take solos in church at the modest price of three pauls per service. He was thus able, at the age of ten, to assist his parents, who, owing to a sudden change in his mother's voice, were again in misfortune. In his desire to help them he seized every opportunity of singing in public, and eagerly accepted an offer to appear at the theatre of the Commune as Adoifo in Paer's 'Camilla.' This was his first and only step in the career of a dramatic singer, but it must have been often difficult to resist taking it up again, when he saw singers receiving a thousand ducats for appearing in operas which he both composed and conducted for fifty.

Thus at the age of thirteen Rossini was a sufficiently good singer to be well received at the theatre; he also played the horn by his father's side, and had a fair reputation as accompanyist. At this time he acquired a valuable friend in the Chevalier Giusti, commanding engineer at Bologna, who took a great affection for the lad, read and explained the Italian poets to him, and opened his fresh and intelligent mind to the comprehension of the ideal; and it was to the efforts of this distinguished man that he owed the start of his genius, and such general knowledge as he afterwards possessed. After three years with Tesei he put himself under a veteran tenor named Babbini to improve his singing. Shortly after this his voice broke, at the end of the autumn of 1806, during a tournée in which he accompanied his father as chorus-master and maestro al cembalo, an engagement in which the daily income of the two amounted to 11 pauls, about equal to 4 shillings. The loss of his voice cost him his engagements in church; but it gave him the opportunity of entering the Conservatorio, or Liceo communale, of Bologna. On March 20, 1807, he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre Mattei, and soon after to that of Cavedagni for the cello. He little anticipated when he took his first lesson that his name would one day be inscribed over the entrance to the Liceo, and give its title to the adjacent square.

His progress on the cello was rapid, and he was soon able to take his part in Haydn's quartets; but his counterpoint lessons were a trouble and a worry to him from the first. Before he entered Mattei's class he had composed a variety of things—little pieces for two horns, songs for Zambini, and even an opera, called 'Demetrio,' for his friends the Mombellis. A youth at once so gifted and so practised deserved a master who was not merely a learned musician, but whose pleasure it should be to introduce his pupil into the mysteries of the art with as little trouble as possible. Unfortunately Mattei was a pedant, who could see no reason for modifying his usual slow mechanical system to suit the convenience of a scholar however able or advanced. His one answer to his pupil's enquiry as to the reason of a change or a progression was, 'It is the rule.' The result was that after a few months of discouraging labour Gioachino began to look to instinct and practice for the philosophy, or it least the rhetoric, of his art. The actual parting is the subject of an anecdote which is not improbably true. Mattei was explaining that the amount of counterpoint which his pupil had already acquired was sufficient for a comoser in the 'free style'; but that for church-music much severer studies were required. 'What,' cried the boy, 'do you mean that I