Pasticcio (music)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pasticcio refers to an opera or a church music work ( oratorio , passion ) that is compiled from existing music by different composers or from different works by one composer.

Emergence

There are various options for creating such a pasticcios:

  • A successful opera is re-staged in another theater. In the 18th century it was common practice to adapt the music to the changed performance conditions. Above all, arias that were not suited to one or the other singer were replaced by other, mostly already tried and tested successful numbers.
  • Pasticci were often given, especially on provincial theaters, to offer the audience a cross-section of the latest works by the most famous masters. Either an existing libretto, which was tailored accordingly, served as the basis of the text, or the house librettist had to invent a new plot around the selected pieces of music.
  • A composer can also combine parts from his own older works into a new one. Examples: Oreste , Giove in Argo and Alessandro Severo by Georg Friedrich Händel , Artamene by Christoph Willibald Gluck , Eduardo e Cristina by Gioachino Rossini .

history

The first pasticci appeared after 1700; its heyday falls between 1720 and 1750, when the opera seria was the dominant form of opera in practically all of Europe (with the exception of France) . Their scheme of separation into acting and observing parts (to which the musically recitative and aria correspond) suits pasticcio practice. The affects that are expressed in the arias recur in every opera and are also strongly typified both lyrically and musically. Therefore the arias easily become set pieces that can be transferred from one opera to another almost at will.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the city's music director in Hamburg from 1768 until his death in 1788 . For many of his church music works from this period, he used existing material; be it own, earlier compositions or the works of other composers such as Georg Anton Benda , Gottfried August Homilius , Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel , but also those of his father Johann Sebastian Bach and his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann .

With the replacement of the opera seria with new forms of opera, which strived for a fusion of music and drama, the pasticci went out of fashion, but occasionally persisted until around 1830, especially in Italy. The pasticcio practice experienced an occasional revival in the field of the so-called "light muse". The music of the operetta Das Dreimäderlhaus by Heinrich Berté was borrowed from various works by Franz Schubert , and the first musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux was a pasticcio, which, however, offered a rather random compilation of popular opera hits .

Artistic classification

From the point of view of the 19th century and especially the German Romanticism, the pasticcio appeared to be an aesthetically questionable art form, which is also expressed in the common German name Flickopern . The idea that practically any piece of music can appear in any opera was difficult to reconcile with the belief in the inviolability of the entire work, and it still seems strange today.

In the worst case, a pasticcio is actually just a collection of musical pieces that have been selected for their pulling power alone, with no particular interest being given to the plot. If the pieces of music are carefully selected and arranged, however, a great work of art can emerge from them that a composer might not have been able to create alone.

Example: Tamerlano / Bajazet by Vivaldi

A typical example of a pasticcio is the opera Tamerlano / Bajazet by Antonio Vivaldi , which was performed in the Carnival of 1735 in the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona . Vivaldi composed some pieces from scratch and took the rest of the music partly from his own works and partly from those of other composers. The following pieces have been identified so far:

  • "Del destin non dee lagnarsi": from L'olimpiade by Antonio Vivaldi ("Del destin non vi lagnate")
  • "Nasce rosa lusinghiera": from Farnace by Antonio Vivaldi ("Scherza l'aura lusinghiera"; previously as "Senti l'aura lusinghiera" in Giustino by Vivaldi)
  • “In sì torbida procella”: from Alessandro Severo by Geminiano Giacomelli
  • “Vedeste mai sul prato”: from Siroe re di Persia by Johann Adolph Hasse
  • “Amare un'alma ingrata”: new
  • "Qual guerriero in campo armato": from Idaspe by Riccardo Broschi
  • “Non ho nel sen costanza”: from Adriano in Siria by Geminiano Giacomelli
  • “Anche il mar par che sommerga”: from Semiramide by Antonio Vivaldi
  • "Stringi le mie catene": new
  • “La sorte mia spietata”: from Siroe re di Persia by Johann Adolph Hasse
  • “La cervetta timidetta”: from Giustino by Antonio Vivaldi
  • "Sposa son disprezzata": from Merope by Geminiano Giacomelli ("Sposa, non mi conosci")
  • “Dov'è la figlia?”: From Motezuma by Antonio Vivaldi
  • “Sì crudel! questo è l'amore "(Quartet): from Farnace by Antonio Vivaldi (" Io crudel? giusto rigore ")
  • “Veder parmi, or che nel fondo”: from Farnace by Antonio Vivaldi
  • "Spesso tra vaghe rose": from Siroe re di Persia by Johann Adolph Hasse
  • “Verrò crudel, spietato”: new
  • "Svena, uccidi, abbatti, atterra": new
  • “Coronata di gigli e di rose” (final chorus): from Farnace by Antonio Vivaldi

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The New Grove , Article Pasticcio , Vol. 14, p. 288
  2. ^ Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg