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One day, as Mr Sharnall was playing a voluntary after the Sunday morning-service, a chorister stole up the little winding steps, and appeared in the organ-loft just as his master had pulled out a handful of stops and dashed into the stretto. The organist had not heard the boy on the stairs, and gave a violent start as he suddenly caught sight of the white surplice.
"In this place," said he, "Rossini ought to have expressed the deepest grief, and I find on the contrary an airy movement, a tone of ill-timed cheerfulness." "You are right," said she. "This mistake is the result of a tyrannous custom which composers are expected to obey. He was thinking more of his prima donna than of Elcia when he wrote that stretto.
Learned Germans might shake their heads and talk about shallowness and contrapuntal rubbish, his crescendo and stretto passages, his tameness and uniformity even in melody, his want of artistic finish; but, as Richard Wagner, his direct antipodes, frankly confesses in his "Oper und Drama," such objections were dispelled by Rossini's opera-airs as if they were mere delusions of the fancy.
Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 123. The diplomatic difficulties of a popular government, a 'governo largo, as opposed to a 'governo stretto, are set forth with great acumen by Guicciardini, Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 84. Cf. vol. iii. p. 272. 'è la sua autorit
This splendid treatment of the voices, recurring three times, ends in the last strophe with a stretto in G major of absolutely overpowering effect. We feel as though this hymn of a nation released from slavery, as it mounts to heaven, were met by kindred strains falling from the higher spheres. The stars respond with joy to the ecstasy of liberated mortals.
And when the clarionet gives the signal for the stretto, 'Voci di giubilo, so brilliant and gay, was not your soul filled with the sacred pyrrhic joy of which David speaks in the Psalms, ascribing it to the hills?" "Yes, it would make a delightful dance tune," said the doctor. "French! French! always French!" exclaimed the Duchess, checked in her exultant mood by this sharp thrust.
And if they are not found important enough to demand mention in this peroration and stretto, as it were, of the whole matter, in which special prominence should be given to the special feature of the work, where ought they to be made important? Mr.
Willeby finds this prelude to be "one of the most beautiful of these spontaneous sketches; for they are no more than sketches. The melody seems literally to wail, and reaches its greatest pitch of intensity at the stretto." For Karasowski it is a "real gem, and alone would immortalize the name of Chopin as a poet."
During this scene, highly amusing to a Frenchman, while la Tinti was recalled eleven times to receive alone the frantic acclamations of the house, Genovese, who was all but hissed, not daring to offer her his hand, the doctor made a remark to the Duchess as to the stretto of the duet.
"Dov' e mai quel core amante," she murmured in Italian, as la Tinti began the delightful aria of the stretto in which she implores pity for her grief. "But what is the matter? The pit are dissatisfied " "Genovese is braying like a stage," replied the Prince. In point of fact, this first duet with la Tinti was spoilt by Genovese's utter breakdown.
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