Brass-Forum: Variations on a Theme from Bellini's Norma

Variations on a Theme from Bellini’s Norma
Jean Baptiste Arban (1825 – 1889)

The French cornet player Jean Baptiste Arban studied at the Paris Conservatoire between 1841 and 1845, before embarking on a conducting career, which included various salon orchestras, the Paris Opera and the French orchestra of St. Petersburg. Having taught for many years at the Ecole Militaire, Arban returned to the Conservatoire in 1869, establishing a cornet class, and thus originating a separation of the traditional school of trumpet playing into two distinct sections. Arban dedicated most of his later life to improving the intonation of brass instruments, collaborating with the makers Mille and Halary and the engineer Bouvet in order to create ‘compensating cornets’ in C with three or four valves.

As a performer, Arban was arguably the first great soloist of his instrument, a master technician and virtuoso. Indeed, his setting of variations on The Carnival of Venice has become the cornettist’s solo piece par excellence, and his Cornet Method (1864) remains the most systematic instruction work of all time.

This set of variations is based on a theme from the tragic opera Norma by the nineteenth century Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, to a libretto by Felice Romani. Premiered at La Scala in 1831, the opera did not enjoy immediate success, but later gained huge popular acclaim, attracting the attention of Arban, who began a series of theme and variations based on famous operatic arias.

Although beginning with a slightly subdued introduction and cadenza, the main theme is taken from Norma’s aria in Act I Scene IV, where the singer speaks of the ‘bloom of life,’ ensuring a characteristically appealing melody, full of wit and charm. The following two variations each deal with a different aspect of technique; in the first, flexibility and control throughout the range, and in the second, a rapid form of articulation known as ‘triple-tonguing.’ While the traditional homophonic accompaniment affords the soloist plenty of scope for stylistic rhubato and embellishment, it also has an important repetitive feature between variations, linking the sections together with an eight-bar motif.

The final variation is intended to completely encapsulate the dramatic, capricious nature of 19th Century Italian opera, a brief più lento leading into a climatic accelerando which flows throughout the finale. With constant support from the underlying diatonic harmony, the soloist ends with a final flourish, an arpeggiated figure in Bb Major bringing the work to a suitably imperious close.