Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Stabat Mater
Gioachino Rossini. Stabat Mater

The author of  Stabat mater dolorosais believed to have been the poet Jacopone da Todi, a Franciscan monk who lived in the 13^th century. Although in the 16^th century the Universal cathedral dropped Stabat mater from the Catholic liturgy composers nevertheless continued to return to this verse, and in 1727 Pope Benedict XIII restored its place in the Missal.

The twenty-six-year-old Giovanni Battista Pergolesi composed Stabat mater for soprano, alto, strings and organ shortly before his death in 1736. He “copied” the format of  participants from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Stabat mater. This work was performed on an annual basis in Naples during the Great Fast, and it would appear that Pergolesi set himself the task of  replacing it with a piece in a new style. And in fact his music is almost completely restricted to the fashionable “gallant” style – responsive, very human and easy to understand. Many of  the musical intonations and sharp rhythms came from opera buffas while the eighth section was named a fugue, though in the strict sense of  the word it is not one at all.

Regardless of  any arguments, could Pergolesi’s Stabat mater really be called religious music? Even in the 18^th century it had been performed throughout Europe. Some performers would increase the number of  those involved and to achieve a fuller sound male voices and wind instruments were added.

In the 19^th century Romantic composers followed the same path of  expanding the scale of  the piece – Verdi, Dvořák and Liszt all turned Stabat mater into something that was almost an oratorio. Gioachino Rossini, however, was head and shoulders above the rest. Having ended his career in opera, in 1832 he began composing his Stabat mater following a commission from the Spanish Chancellor, Manuel Fernández Varela. Due to ill health he was unable to complete the score on time. Rossini wrote the first and the fifth to the ninth sections, stopping after the mystical quartet with no accompaniment Quando corpus morietur. He had to turn to a friend – the composer, singing teacher, and Director of  the Théâtre Italien in Paris Giovanni Tadolini, and he completed the missing sections. in this form the work was soon performed in Madrid.

Ten years later Rossini returned to Stabat mater, replacing Tadolini’s music with his own. the first performance at the Salle Ventadour in Paris was a triumph. the Italian premiere in Bologna was conducted by Donizetti and the tenor role sung by Nikolai Ivanov – one of  the first famous Russian “defectors” – who was then at the height of  his fame. It comes as a pleasant surprise to see how close together Rossini managed to bring religious music and opera. We should be no less surprised at how far behind he left the operatic style in certain parts and how little he referred to his own music from the 1820s – at times Rossini comes across here as being the same age as the young Verdi.
Anna Bulycheva