Rossini: Organ 4 Hands Overture Arrangements – Giuliana Maccaroni

The organ is one of the most extraordinary musical instruments, for a number of reasons. Technologically, and at various moments in history, it has frequently represented the most advanced machine of its time. The complex interaction and the tight intertwining of manifold scientific and technological competences and knowledge contributed to its astonishing development.
It was an instrument for producing art, and also a work of art in itself; it frequently represented a considerable investment, and therefore the building of a new organ was normally a joint enterprise which involved entire communities. This was also connected with a religious dimension: in the Western culture, organs were ordinarily found in churches. Their sound thus started to acquire a symbolic association with the sphere of the sacred; and it was significant that the summit of an epoch’s technological expertise, an artistic work used to make art, and a conspicuous financial investment all converged in a single religious artefact.
Of course, organs also represented a community’s prestige; their powerful sound and their imposing visual appearance bore witness to the city or town’s wealth, to their citizens’ religiosity, and to their love for the beautiful and the artistic.
Last but not least, and by definition, the organ was the only individual instrument which could embody, represent and sometimes reproduce the variety of timbre and dynamics which normally only an orchestra could provide. Since organs were played at religious ceremonies and worship services open to all people, even those who could not afford an opera or concert ticket could experience an awe-inspiring, moving and exciting feeling of the power of music and of the majestic sound of a large instrumental body.
On the other hand, the organist could frequently be the only musically literate person in a small rural community; thus, the case was relatively common of musically gifted children who received their first instruction from the local organist and then progressed to become famous composers or performers. Among the musicians whose first interest in the discipline was sparked by the local organist is Giuseppe Verdi, the acknowledged standard-bearer of the Italian operatic tradition.
This may seem surprising at first; today, we are used to consider liturgical music and musical theatre as two fundamentally opposed forms of music-making: on the one hand there is sacred music, solemn, reverent, expressing a collective religious feeling and aiming at the congregation’s uplifting; on the other is opera, with its more subjective quality, its love-stories, the entertainment it provides.