Capriccio ("Rossini in Paris")

The Capriccio for Clarinet and Orchestra (Rossini in Paris) is the result of a visit to Pesaro, Rossini's birthplace, during the summer of 1984 to hear Il viaggio a Reims. That was the first opera Rossini composed for Paris, in 1825, and it was being revived for the first time. The music proved to be extraordinarily delightful—witty, touching, outrageous, frivolous, and sentimental: unimportant, to be sure, compared to Beethoven, whose Ninth Symphony was introduced a year
earlier, but valuable nonetheless as a reminder that all music need not aspire to a transcendent loftiness. Occasionally, pleasure and entertainment are enough—or so it seems to me.
With that in mind, and reading a recent biography of the composer, it occurred to me to write a piece that not only followed his example but would also be an homage to him. At first I was tempted to use some, actual themes from those delicious piano pieces he called Sins of My Old Age, but Respighi, Britten, and others had already done that, so I merely borrowed a few of their titles to give a direction for each of the three movements that eventually evolved. These titles are not meant to indicate any programmatic content, but only to suggest a mood.
I. UNE RÉJOUISSANCE refers to0 Rossini's first prolonged stay in Paris,
when he produced a string of triumphs culminating in William Tell and became the
most popular figure of his time in the French capital.
II. UNE CARESSE À MA FEMME was Rossini's own loving tribute to his
second wife, Olympe Pélissier, who nursed him through out the many years of
illness that followed his retirement from the operatic world.
III. UN PETIT TRAIN DU PLAJSIR alludes 10 the famous Saturday night
parties given by the Rossinis after his recovery—invitations to which were coveted by every celebrated visitor to Paris. It was during these soirées musicales, with Rossini himself at the keyboard, that many of the Sins of My Old Age were first performed.