Sleeping Beauty -- Tchaikovsky/Rossini Source for Apotheosis

[Helene]

I was just listening to the end of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (1825, 15 years before Tchaikovsky was born) on the radio, and the final chorus, depicting the coronation of Charles X, sounded more and more familiar. Finally, I realized that it sounded like the apotheosis from Sleeping Beauty. Is this coincidence? A deliberate quote of Rossini by Tchaikovsky? A deliberate quote of something else by both of them?

I'm not having much luck with searching for this on the Internet.

[FauxPas]

I was just listening to the end of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (1825, 15 years before Tchaikovsky was born) on the radio, and the final chorus, depicting the coronation of Charles X, sounded more and more familiar. Finally, I realized that it sounded like the apotheosis from Sleeping Beauty. Is this coincidence? A deliberate quote of Rossini by Tchaikovsky? A deliberate quote of something else by both of them?

I'm not having much luck with searching for this on the Internet.

Helene, you are lucky that I am also an avid opera maven. Rossini's "Il Viaggio a Reims" was a piece d'occasion that was not meant for revival, was never published and the score was dismantled by Rossini for use in other scores. The major portion of the work was recycled into Rossini's first French opera-comique "Le Comte Ory" and that is where Tchaikovsky would have encountered this piece if it made its way into "Sleeping Beauty". You would need to research the portions of "Ory" that come from "Viaggio" and see if that is one of them.

BTW: in his "Capriccio Italien" Tchaikovsky just lifts a big melody from Auber's "Le Domino Noir" wholesale. That was a very popular work that he would have heard in Russia.

[Helene]

Many thanks, FauxPas

[volcanohunter]

I had read somewhere that both Rossini and Tchaikovsky used the melody to the anthem "Vive Henri IV." Liszt also produced a piano arrangement of the tune. You can listen to a brief clip at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Liszt-Fantasies-para...l/dp/B000002ZVY

There's also a funky 16th-century-style arrangement on this out-of-print disc:

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Age-Discovery/...les/B0000287Z9/

[Helene]

Thanks to volcanohunter's identification of the source music, I found the following info on Wikipedia:

The song Vive Henri IV ("Long Live Henry IV") was used during the Restoration, as an unofficial anthem of France, played in the absence of the king.

Henri IV's dates are 1553-1610, so the 16th century arrangement might be authentic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France

While the Restoration began in 1814 (Louis VIII), Charles X's reign began in 1824, the year before Rossini penned il Viaggo a Reims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_Restoration

It's very possible that Tchaikovsky would have been familiar with an "unofficial anthem of France" from many sources.

Given the rather tepid history of the Bourbon Restoration, I wonder if using this music to represent the restoration of the monarchy after 100 years sleep at the end of Sleeping Beauty was as reassuring to the ruling classes at the premiere as it was allegedly meant to be. It also puts a slightly different light on Peter Martins's use of it to represent passing the torch to a post-Balanchine generation.

[Hans]

I read that Petipa asked Tchaikovsky to use Vive Henri IV.

[Mel Johnson]

"Vive Henri IV" was a well-known hymntune in Russia and other places which knew the joys of Divine Right Absolute Monarchy. Tolstoi obliquely blames the 1812 invasion by Napoleon for its introduction into Russia. In War and Peace, a drunken French soldier keeps bawling this song in his stupor.

[leonid17]

I was just listening to the end of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (1825, 15 years before Tchaikovsky was born) on the radio, and the final chorus, depicting the coronation of Charles X, sounded more and more familiar. Finally, I realized that it sounded like the apotheosis from Sleeping Beauty. Is this coincidence? A deliberate quote of Rossini by Tchaikovsky? A deliberate quote of something else by both of them?

I'm not having much luck with searching for this on the Internet.

Whilst the Sleeping Beauty was a tribute to the Romanov dynasty via a French setting of Royalty, the original Charles Perrault tale written in the time of Louis XIV the Sun King and the tune of the Apotheosis is from the song 'Vivre Henri IV' the grandfather of Louis XIV and founder of the Bourbon line. After the restoration of the monarchy in France the song was adopted as the national anthem of France.It may well have been at the suggestion of Vsevolozhky a former diplomat and well-known Francophile to echo the splendour of Louis XIV's court and equating the splendour of the the Romanov's to that earlier period. French taste had influenced Russian Palace design and decor for a long time in Russia and would remain so until the 1917Revolution. If you visit the palaces of St. Petersburg today, you cannot miss the Francophile influence.

[Mel Johnson]

The earliest I can find this tune is 1600, shortly after the declaration of the Edict of Nantes, which commanded religious toleration in the Kingdom of France. Both the Huguenots and the Catholics used it, but during the reign of Louis XIV, it became a sort of derision of Louis, who was finally to revoke the Edict. (Henry IV was upheld as the model of the benevolent Absolute Monarch - Louis was intolerant) During the Bourbon Restoration after Napoleon, partisans of Louis XVIII did use the song as a sort of unofficial anthem for the Bourbon cause, if not France itself.

[Klavier]

http://www.amazon.com/Rossini-viaggio-Ricc...i/dp/B000001G6O

Scroll down to the comment by Timothy Kearney. (Is this ok to post here?)

What has always struck me is that this apotheosis is in a minor key. Has that made a similar impression on anyoneelse, and if so, is it somehow dramatically appropriate?

[Mel Johnson]

Anybody but the Bonapartes!

That modal change has been responsible for some pretty misleading record jacket liner notes. Those for the old Dorati recording said the tune was "an old Russian hymn." Well, the Russians knew it, but they also knew it wasn't Russian. Ever notice how, when you go back into pre-baroque, the farther you go, the more minor mode you get until you're back to the pentatonic scales? "Vive Henri IV" is just barely 16th-century.

[Hans]

I think it is appropriate. It is majestic "court pageant" music, serious rather than sad.