ABSTRACT
The origins of the overture to Guillaume Tell might lie in Beethoven's Sixth Symphony op. 68, the Pastoral Symphony, and it is a suggestion that I would like to pursue. A simple question immediately has to be posed: how likely is it that Rossini, the critic for Le censeur dramatique, or anyone else in Paris knew Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony in 1829? The chronology of the Paris premiere of the Pastoral Symphony and the composition of the Guillaume Tell overture is remarkable for the following reasons:
3. The particular qualities shared by Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and the overture to Rossini's opera: the similar contiguity of pastoral and temporale topics
4. A similarly ambivalent hermeneutic impulse in the reception of the two works
5. The use of similar musical procedures (moves from one movement to another, periphrastic variation)
6. The sound world in the two premieres generated by the same players and the same instruments in performing spaces they and Rossini knew only too well.
