Rossini’s William Tell Finale

Music AppreciationFeatures
Written By Edward Wolfe

Happy New Year!

Those of us who grew up with the old, black-and-white TV series The Lone Ranger heard the finale from Rossini’s (1792-1868) William Tell Overture every week.

The actual overture has four parts, which follow one another without break:

  1. Dawn

  2. Storm

  3. Call to the Cows

  4. Finale

The overture belongs to Rossini’s final opera Guilluame Tell, about the legendary Swiss hero, William Tell. An overture usually is an instrumental piece designed to set the attitude of the main work that follows, like music under the opening credits in many movies.

The stirring Finale of Rossini’s overture still gives me a thrill and brings a smile to my face, as often as I’ve heard it. The recording linked here, by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, is especially fun because it includes close-ups of some of the featured instruments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIbYCOiETx0

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Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com
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