Gioacchino ROSSINI
stabat mater
1792–1868
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Stabat mater Cujus animam gementem Quis est homo Pro peccatis Eja, Mater, fons amoris Sancta Mater Fac ut portem Inflammatus et accensus Quando corpus morietur Amen
Text begins on page 11. Rossini never considered himself an adequate composer of sacred music. When the priest Fernández Varela suggested he might write a Stabat Mater, those feelings were only exacerbated. Giovanni Pergolesi’s moving setting of the same verses was known and loved throughout Italy and beyond; surely, Rossini believed, he was setting himself up for comparison against Pergolesi and inevitable failure? But Rossini allowed himself to be persuaded – to a point, at least. Pressure from his patron Alexandre Aguado (a friend of Varela’s) saw the composer write six movements of a Stabat Mater (Nos. 1 and 5–9) in 1831–2. Thereafter Rossini fell ill – at least, that’s what he claimed – and successfully implored his colleague Giovanni Tadolini to complete the remaining movements in time for a première performance on Good Friday 1833 in Madrid. The hybrid Stabat Mater was a relative success. But eight years later, with Tadolini dead, the semi-retired Rossini started to believe he could make it even more so. And
not just musically, but financially, too: the completion and publication of a solely authored version of the piece could ride off the back of a successful ‘second’ première and prove lucrative. There followed a lengthy legal battle – you’re best spared the details – but Rossini emerged the victor and set about re-writing the Tadolini movements himself. The first performance of the ‘finished’ Rossini work took place in March 1842 conducted by an enthusiastic Gaetano Donizetti. Immediately those lucky spectators at the Théâtre Italien in Paris were struck by just how heartfelt the music appeared. Like countless composers before and after him, Rossini seems to have been stirred by Jacopone da Todi’s text, which portrays the mother of Christ at the foot of her crucified son’s cross. But while Rossini’s music felt expressive and vocally shapely to some, to others it was too excessively rhythmic and outspokenly operatic for its dark subject matter. They thought it not only overly sensuous but also disrespectfully playful. The German poet Heinrich Heine countered those critics, recognising the honesty of Rossini’s sentiments in the context of his other musical creations. Likewise, some have suggested the music be viewed as a heartfelt devotion not to Christ but to the essence of poetry and the superlative beauty of the human voice. There are, despite both arguments, striking examples of Rossini’s sacred music schooling in the Stabat Mater, not least its two unaccompanied movements, ‘Eja, Mater’ and ‘Quando corpus morietur’. Here Rossini initiates the idea of the ‘descending’ musical phrase (which becomes a touchstone of the whole work) and writes with shapely and plaintive qualities that sprung directly from his interest in pre-Classical church music,
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 9