 |
Meet Philip Gossett By JUDITH CLURMAN
Philip Gossett is an acclaimed world expert on the music of Rossini and Verdi. He serves on the faculty of the University of Chicago, and as president of the American Musicological Society and of the Society for Textual Scholarship. In 1998, the President of Italy decorated him with the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, Italy's highest civilian honor.
 |
| Philip Gossett (Photo by Maurizio de Nisi) |
|
Years back, I was performing choral works by Rossini in a concert with my New York Concert Singers and consulted with Dr. Gossett, the editor of Rossini's choral music. At that time, we discussed a performance of the composer's Petite Messe Solennelle. I am pleased that he has provided the music for the U.S. premiere of the 1864 chamber version, which will be presented by members of the Juilliard Choral Union, under my direction, on March 19 in Alice Tully Hall. Dr. Gossett will be delivering the pre-concert lecture for the performance. Joining the chorus are soprano Hanan Alattar, tenor Javier Abreu, bass Daniel Gross, and mezzo-soprano Alison Tupay. The performance also features Christine McLeavey and Janet Hui-Chuan Kao, pianos, and Sean Jackson, harmonium.This past fall, I went to Chicago to visit Dr. Gossett and discuss the upcoming performance. I asked him to share some thoughts about his career and work.Judith Clurman: How did you become a musician?Philip Gossett: I began studying piano when I was 5. While in high school, I studied piano at the Juilliard Prep [now the Pre-College Division], with Dora Bornstein, and theory and harmony with Frances Goldstein. After my classes at Juilliard on Saturdays, I went to the Metropolitan Opera and stood at the matinees. Upon graduation from high school, I went to Amherst College, where I studied physics and was the accompanist of the glee club. Then I "saw the light" and decided to go into music! I left Amherst, studied at Columbia University for one year, accompanied the glee club there, and returned to Amherst, where I finished my bachelor's degree. I went to Princeton University for graduate work in musicology. I fell more in love with the music and wrote my doctoral dissertation on the music of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. Then I went to Paris on a Fulbright and studied Rossini's operas. JC: Then what happened?PG: The University of Chicago offered me a job in 1968, where I teach undergraduates and graduate seminars.JC: Can you tell me about the Rossini and Verdi editions for which you serve as editor?PG: I direct the critical editions of the complete works of Rossini and Verdi. The Rossini editions began in 1971; the Verdi editions began in 1970. The University of Chicago publishes both. I am presently preparing an edition of La Forza del Destino, and transcribing 200 pages of Verdi's music that no one has ever seen. What is most exciting is that the Verdi family has shared the composer's manuscripts with me. Opera companies in Milan, St. Petersburg, and San Francisco will present the version in 2005. We are also in the midst of completing the critical edition of Un Ballo in Maschera. We have reconstructed the version of the opera that Verdi brought with him to Naples in 1858 that was never heard there for political reasons. We have performed it in Sweden and just performed it in Naples in January 2004. I was an advisor for that production.JC: How many editions have you edited to date?PG: We have published 27 volumes of Rossini, and we have six or seven more operas prepared but still unpublished. We have 11 complete operas by Verdi and five are now being edited for publication.JC: I know that there is a beautiful edition of the Verdi Requiem.PG: Yes, and it is edited by David Rosen of Cornell University. There are some differences from the traditionally performed work, and I urge you to check it out.
|
Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle
Juilliard Choral Union and Orchestra
Judith Clurman, conductor
Alice Tully Hall
Friday, March 19, 8 p.m.
For time and ticket information, please see
the calendar.
|
|
|
JC: You work with many conductors and opera companies and mentioned that you will be advisor to a production of Un Ballo in Maschera. Please tell me about your involvement in such musical productions.PG: I try to assist conductors and directors in an understanding of how the opera works, dramatically and musically. For instance, when I worked on Rossini's Ermione at Santa Fe, I collaborated with the stage director, Jonathan Miller. This is complicated poetry and someone who really knows the work can be very helpful. I also prepare Rossini ornaments for the singers, teach them what is stylistically accurate, and adapt the ornaments to their voices and needs. Then they do their own thing! I learn from the singers and their coaches, as I have from mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne and pianist Martin Katz. I also have worked closely with many conductors, among them Riccardo Muti, James Levine, Riccardo Chailly, James Conlon, and Roger Norrington. I often help them with appropriate cuts. I try to make suggestions that would have pleased Rossini and his audiences.JC: Let's get to the Petite Messe Solennelle. We spoke about collaborating on this project years back, and I am so pleased that we are working together on the U.S. premiere of the original version of the piece. Can you explain the history of this newly found music? Where did you find it?PG: Rossini was commissioned to write this work by one of his bankers, Count Pillet-Wills. It was first performed for the dedication of a private chapel in the count's home. After that performance, Rossini gave the count a copy of the entire score.I had known for ages that this score existed for chorus, soloists, two pianos, and harmonium. I was unable to find the correct Pillet-Wills family because the Parisian phonebook has 25 people listed with that name. However, a few years ago, when I was dean at the University of Chicago, I was invited to the president's house. An important friend of the university was at my table. We began talking about her experiences in France. She mentioned (many times) her dear friends in France, but it was only after 15 minutes that she named them. After pulling myself up from under the table, I asked her for more information. She told me that they often come to Chicago and, in fact, they would be coming to visit in the near future. She would introduce the family to me.True to her word, she arranged a luncheon. It became immediately clear that this was the right Pillet-Wills family. They invited me to their chateau in France, north of Paris, and in the next fall my wife and I made the time to visit. The count was a wonderful man and musician, and he produced the manuscript. He allowed me to spend three days working with it and then gave me a photocopy. On the basis of this trip I was able to restore the original version of the Petite Messe Solennelle. It was performed for the first time, in Pesaro, at the Rossini Opera Festival in 1997. The performance was dedicated to the memory of Count Jacques Pillet-Wills, who had died one year before. This performance at Juilliard will be the first performance in the United States of this chamber version. Rossini had orchestrated the Petite Messe Solennelle and all the versions that are published to date are based on a reduction of the orchestral version that is more heavily rhetorical. The Rossini Foundation of Pesaro intends to print both versions—the orchestral and this chamber version we are performing—in critical editions, so they will be available for performances.JC: Last question. You and I have spoken numerous times about editions of music. Can you please offer some insight to the Juilliard students about what they need to look for while purchasing an edition of Rossini or Verdi?PG: The scores of Italian operas available until recently were all prepared in the 19th century on the basis of whatever source Ricordi, in Milan, happened to have in its archive. In some cases, they had good sources. In others, the sources they had available could not have been further removed from what the composer wrote. Even when they had good sources, they did not know how to interpret them because they made no effort to seek out material that was not in Milan. Thus, to reconstruct Verdi's Macbeth, for instance, we consulted autographed manuscripts in Milan, Paris, and Washington, D.C. To reconstruct Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims, we used sources in Rome, Paris, Vienna, and New York. The scores reprinted cheaply today simply reproduce all the errors, all the faults of these 19th-century scores—most of which were produced very quickly and, in Verdi's own words, "are filled with errors." (Verdi said this about the edition of Il Trovatore.) The new critical editions have tried, for the first time, to return to authentic sources and they allow performers to have access to the various versions sanctioned by the composers.JC: Thank you very much. See you at rehearsal in March!Judith Clurman, director of choral activities, is director of the Juilliard Choral Union.
|
