Pergolesi: Stabat Mater; Salve Regina in A Minor

Featuring

Gillian Fisher
Michael Chance
Robert King
The King's Consort
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

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Composition History

Of the 148 works in a 1939-1942 edition of Pergolesi's Opera omnia, only 30 are considered genuine, with many others misattributed or questionable.

Composition History

Pergolesi wrote the Stabat mater during his final months at a Franciscan monastery, possibly as a replacement for Alessandro Scarlatti's Stabat mater for a Neapolitan church.

Historical Context

Pergolesi, like Mozart, was buried in a common pit, and some writers have drawn parallels between their sad circumstances and their final works.

Critical Reception

The Stabat mater became the most frequently printed single work in the 18th century, with Rousseau calling its opening bars 'the most perfect and most touching to have come from the pen of any musician'.

Compositional Technique

Pergolesi's Stabat mater features an extraordinary harmonic language, including a remarkable grasp of chromaticism and distinctly operatic music despite its somber text.

Composer Biography

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi achieved only modest success during his short lifetime, dying at the age of 26.

Cultural Impact

Pergolesi's opera La serva padrona was so popular that its 1752 Paris run caused the Querelle des Bouffons, a pamphlet war between supporters of traditional French opera and fans of Italian opera buffa.