Bossi, Marco Enrico (1861-1925)
Jeanne D´Arc per Organo (Macinanti)
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One subject that has always stimulated artistic imagination is that of Joan of Arc (1412 - 1431), the young peasant girl who received a calling from God to free France from the British and at the command of an army in 1429 liberated Orleans and the French territory as far as Reims, making the crowning of Charles VII possible.
Captured by the Burgundies in Compiègne in 1430, she was sold to the British and burnt at the stake with the accusation of witchcraft. In 1920 she was proclaimed a Saint and elected patroness of France. The origins of Bossi’s composition can be found in a draft initially entitled Il Carme del dolore, that Maffeo Zanon, a student of Bossi relates thus: "Another time, in January 1909, also during a trip, he was deeply shaken by the very recent disaster in Reggio [Calabria] and Messina; and so in the train he started to draft a slow, lugubrious composition, based on insistent bell sounds. He showed it to me a few days later in Venice, even telling me that he didn’t know what use he could have for it. It was just four pages, or just under, almost without any deletions, as the music had come to him easily.
A few years later he used that piece in a page of "Giovanna d’Arco", his last great work; it is the part that precedes the death scene. He couldn’t have found a more appropriate place for it." This manuscript, although composed on three staves, does not appear to refer to the organ, it rather appears to be a general piece for piano with the addition of two interjections for the voices of the choir. The title of this draft was then deleted and replaced with: I funerali di Britannico figlio di Claudio e Messalina avvelenato da Nerone (55 dell’era volgare).
A second source, used as the main reference for this edition, bears the title Spunti e materiali per Jeanne d’Arc and is dated Bologna 1909: it contains a more accurate version of the other material. The three staves expressly directed to the manual keyboards and the pedal board permit this composition to be attributed to the organ, while the fingering and pedalling indications made by Bossi reveal that it was probably used for concerts.
The composition remained in any event unpublished.At a later date, Bossi used 44 measures of it for the twelfth scene (Il Martirio) of Johanna d’Arc (Joan of Arc) op. 135, "Mistero" (subtitle suggested by G. D’Annunzio), in a prologue and three parts on a text by Luigi Orsini for soloists, choir (mixed, male and white voices), great orchestra and organ that he commenced in 912 (source c).
Dedicated to Principessa Elena di Francia, Duchessa d’Aosta and published in Leipzig in 1914 by Leuckart, the "Mistero" was played for the first time in Cologne on 20 January of the same year under F. Steinbach’s baton and replicated with great success in Berlin, Amsterdam, Hannover, Braunschweig, Munich, Gladbach, Budapest, Prague, St. Gallen, Wiesbaden, Hamburg, Dortmund, Turin (Vittorio Emanuele theatre) and Rome (Augusteum).
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