Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792 – 1868) was an
Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas,
although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music
and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new
standards for both comic and serious opera before
retiring from large-scale composition while still in
his thirties, at the height of his popularity. He was
born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his
father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began
to compose by the age of ...(+)
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792 – 1868) was an
Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas,
although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music
and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new
standards for both comic and serious opera before
retiring from large-scale composition while still in
his thirties, at the height of his popularity. He was
born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his
father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began
to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music
school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in
Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was
engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples.
In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the
Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan,
Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity
necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some
components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of
self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most
popular works, including the comic operas L'italiana in
Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as
The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which
brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he
inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa and
Giovanni Paisiello. He also composed opera seria works
such as Tancredi, Otello and Semiramide. All of these
attracted admiration for their innovation in melody,
harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In
1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for
which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation
of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (later cannibalised
for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions
of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and
Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell.
Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years
of his life has never been fully explained;
contributary factors may have been ill-health, the
wealth his success had brought him, and the rise of
spectacular grand opera under composers such as Giacomo
Meyerbeer. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left
Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote
relatively little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he
became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays,
regularly attended by musicians and the artistic and
fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the
entertaining pieces Péchés de vieillesse. Guests
included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi,
Meyerbeer and Joseph Joachim. Rossini's last major
composition was his Petite messe solennelle (1863). He
died in Paris in 1868.
The name of Gioacchino Rossini is indissolubly linked
with opera, his lighthearted sallies in this field,
like The Italian Girl in Algiers and The Barber of
Seville, revealing a more assured sense of theatre and
making more of an impact than the tragic Tancredi or
William Tell. But he also composed sacred music,
including the Stabat mater and the Petite messe
solennelle. As he wrote in a letter to the critic
Filippo Filippi, ‘all genres are good except the
boring one’. O salutaris hostia is a moving,
homophonic motet for unaccompanied four-part choir,
published in Paris in 1857.
"O Salutaris Hostia" (Latin, "O Saving Victim" or "O
Saving Sacrifice") is a section of one of the
Eucharistic hymns written by Thomas Aquinas for the
Feast of Corpus Christi. He wrote it for the Hour of
Lauds in the Divine Office. It is actually the last two
stanzas of the hymn Verbum supernum prodiens, and is
used for the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The
other two hymns written by Aquinas for the Feast
contain the famous sections Panis angelicus and Tantum
ergo.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioachino_Rossini).
Although originally composed for Chorus (SATB), I
created this interpretation of "O salutaris hostia"
(IGR 46) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC