Servais - Fantaisie et Variations sur des motifs de l'Opéra la Fille du Régiment de Donizetti, Op. 16 (Urtext Edition, Quintet Version)

François Servais is best remembered today for his Six Caprices, Op. 11, but much of his output consists of brilliant concert fantasies based on opera themes and popular melodies. His Fantaisie et Variations sur des motifs de l’opéra La Fille du Régiment de Donizetti, Op. 16, was among his better-known works, especially after his death. Its influence can be traced in the next generation of Romantic-era cello writing, including works by Karl Davydov, David Popper, Victor Herbert, and Antonín Dvořák.

The fantasy is built around themes from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, especially “Chacun le sait, chacun le dit.” The work includes an introduction, recitative, theme and four variations, Romance, and Finale, with each variation centered on a particular virtuoso technique: long shifts and string crossings, long bows and syncopated bowing, artificial harmonics, and octaves. David Popper’s Etude, Op. 73, No. 38, draws on figuration found in mm. 225–232 of this fantasy, while the figuration in mm. 324–337 was later famously used in the first movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, Op. 104.

A major example of Servais’s opera-fantasy style, this work combines Donizetti’s melodic brilliance with the full range of nineteenth-century cello virtuosity.

This edition presents the version for cello and string quintet. This set contains the quintet score, solo cello part, and quintet parts.

ASTA Level: 6