Autograph working manuscript for small orchestra in score. Et Vitam. France, ca. 1850
One bifolium (272 x 347 mm). 4 pp. Notated in black ink on 26-stave rastrum-ruled paper. Unsigned and undated.
With significant corrections, cancels, etc.
Slightly worn and browned; small tear to blank outer margin of first leaf repaired; horizontal crease; short split to head and tail of spine.
In very good condition overall.
Music unlocated, but very likely from a sacred vocal work with orchestra.
The first page contains 16 measures of music on 8-line staves (the uppermost stave marked with the key signature of 5 sharps) in a contrapuntal style incorporating stretto technique, whereby a melody is restated in overlapping fashion in two or more voices.
The second page contains 28 measures (including four cancelled measures with music still visible) on 4- and 5-line staves, with a sharp-key signature as in the first page, and passages of high-register 8th notes, most likely for violin; the uppermost stave is designated "1e. Basson."
The third page contains 21 measures on an 8-line stave, being an alternate iteration of the material from the first page; the final 4 measures, which are cancelled, contain tremolo [?]string material, similar to the second page.
The upper portion of the fourth and final page contains 8 measures of music, similar to the first and third pages, in a stretto character, but with a new key signature of 3 flats.
With 2 measures of music, also with 3 flats, to lower portion of final page.
Gounod's interest in sacred music and counterpoint was awakened in his youth and continued for the span of his career. "Gounod arrived at the French Academy in Rome at the end of January 1840. Little there sustained his musical interest. He excoriated performances of operas by Donizetti, Bellini and Mercadante, composers he later characterized as mere ‘vines twisted around the great Rossinian trunk, without its vitality and majesty’ and unable to match that composer's spontaneous melodic gifts. Gounod was, however, genuinely moved by performances of Palestrina at the Cappella Sistina and more generally by the cultural legacy of Rome in the other arts, a legacy he felt that musicians could ill afford to ignore. His Roman experience laid the foundation for the stark comparison he drew in his aesthetics between, on the one hand, a universally appealing combination of beauty, truth and Christianity and, on the other, egoism, artifice and insularity. He described stile antico counterpoint as a selfless analogue to Michelangelo's frescoes issuing from pure Faith." Steven Huebner in Grove Music Online
A fine example of a Gounod working manuscript, in the composer's elegant hand, displaying how he skillfully wove together counterpoint, orchestration, and compositional structure; well worthy of further study.
Item #39978
Price: $1,350.00 other currencies