Péchés de vieillesse

In Gioacchino Rossini's Péchés de vieillesse ("sins of old age"), the opera composer gathered together numerous vocal and solo piano pieces into fourteen unpublished albums, under his self-deprecating and ironic title. The grouping of pieces in albums do not reflect the sequence or the dates of their composition, which ranged from 1857 to shortly before his death in 1868.

The "Péchés de vieillesse" are salon music, though of a refined order, most of them meant to be performed with a few singers to piano accompaniment in the privacy of Rossini's drawing room at Passy.

*"Vol I Album italiano"
*"Vol II Album français"
*"Vol III Morceaux réservés"
*"Vol IV Quatre hors d’œuvres et quatre mendiants"
*"Vol V Album pour les enfants adolescents"
*"Vol VI Album pour les enfants dégourdis"
*"Vol VII Album de chaumière"
*"Vol VIII Album de château"
*"Vol IX Album pour piano, violon, violoncello, harmonium et cor"
*"Vol X Miscellanée pour piano"
*"Vol XI Miscellanée de musique vocale"
*"Vol XII Quelques riens pour album"
*"Vol XIII Musique anodine" (1857). Presented to his wife Olimpe in gratitude for her care during his long intermittent illness.

Critical editions of all the albums are in process of publication by the Fondazione Rossini, Pesaro, which conserves the original autograph manuscripts; they are distributed by the University of Chicago. The new editions restore Rossini's expressively precise musical notation and offer heretofore unpublished alternative versions of some "Péchés".

After the composer's death in 1873, his widow, Olympe Pélissier, sold the entire collection, which was then auctioned in London, in 1878. The "Société anonyme de publications périodique", Paris, was among the buyers, who sold publishing rights to the firm of Heugel. The edition was prepared by Auguste-Edouard Vaucorbeil (1821-1884), director of the Paris Opéra, who reordered the pieces and gave them new picturesque titles, as Rossini's often nonsensical titles, which looked forward to Eric Satie's, were deemed unsuitable.

References

* [http://www.rossinigesellschaft.de/data/pdvd.html List and text of the songs on the website of the "German Rossini Society"]
* [http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~hou00140 Houghton Library, Harvard University:] 35 "Péchés" in scribal manuscript