Stabat Mater

ROSSINI STABAT MATER Feola • Romberger • Korchak • Kares Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks Münchner Rundfunkorchester Howard Arman Gioachino Rossini 1792–1868 STABAT MATER for soloists, choir and orchestra für Soli, Chor und Orchester 1. Introduction (soloists/chorus) Stabat mater dolorosa – Andantino moderato 8:08 2. Aria (tenor) Cujus animam gementem – Allegretto maestoso 5:50 3. Duet (soprano/alto) Quis est homo – Largo 5:57 4. Aria (bass) Pro peccatis suae gentis – Allegretto maestoso 3:55 5. Chorus and recitativo (bass) Eja mater, fons amoris – Andante mosso 4:01 6. Quartet (soloists) Sancta mater, istud agas – Allegretto moderato 7:16 7. Cavatina (alto) Fac ut portem – Andante grazioso 4:28 8. Aria (soprano) and chorus Inflammatus et accensus – Andante maestoso 4:32 9. Quartet (soloists) Quando corpus morietur – Andante 4:38 10. Finale (chorus) Amen – Allegro 5:48 Rosa Feola soprano Gerhild Romberger alto Dmitry Korchak tenor Mika Kares bass Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks Münchner Rundfunkorchester Howard Arman conductor Howard Arman rus and an orchestra in order to perform the work in its entirety: “It was necessary, above everything, to assure ourselves of the collaboration of leading artists. Mme Giulia Grisi SWEET LAMENT and M. Mario did not immediately appreciate the scope of the work and greeted our pro- GIOACHINO ROSSINI’S STABAT MATER ject coldly. Tamburini alone understood us; after having read the Pro peccatis twice and having cast his eye over the whole of the work, he exclaimed: ‘It is beautiful, it is admira- “You tell me that you’ve been sold an item of some value,” Gioachino Rossini wrote angrily ble, I will see Mmes Grisi and Albertazzi and M. Mario. In the meantime, you can absolutely to the French music publisher Antoine Aulagnier in September 1841 after a third party had count upon me.’” sold Aulagnier the autograph score of the original version of the Italian composer’s Stabat mater and Aulagnier had written to Rossini to ask for his permission to publish it. Rossini The first performance of Rossini’s own newly completed version of theStabat mater took refused, arguing that he had “merely dedicated” the work “to the Reverend Father Manuel place on 7 January 1842 and was an outright triumph. The proceeds of fourteen further Fernández Varela, while reserving for myself the right to publish it whenever I consider it performances were generously donated by the Escudier brothers to the director of the opportune. Without entering into the sort of swindle that someone has sought to perpe- Théâtre-Italien, helping to fill the institution’s coffers with urgently needed funds. trate to the detriment of my interests, I declare to you, Monsieur, that if my Stabat mater is published without my authorization, whether in France or abroad, my firm intention is In Bologna, too, the enthusiasm knew no bounds, as Gaetano Donizetti – expressly invited to pursue the publisher and hound him to death. What is more, Monsieur, I must tell you by Rossini himself to conduct the performances – confided to a friend on 20 March 1842: that in the copy I sent to the Reverend Father, there are only six numbers of my own com- “We are up to the third and final performance today. The enthusiasm is impossible to position, a friend of mine having been invited to complete what I could not finish myself describe. After the last rehearsal, which Rossini attended in broad daylight, he was ac- because I was seriously ill.” companied to his house amid the shouting of more than five hundred people. The same thing happened the first night under his windows, although he was not in the room. And If Rossini reacted so gruffly to Aulagnier’s request, this may have been due in part to the yesterday the same.” fact that the then forty-nine-year-old composer’s health had markedly deteriorated, re- sulting in bouts of depression and panic attacks. In the meantime, moreover, Rossini had The work’s incredible success, not to mention a genesis that would itself be worthy of a completed those sections of the score that he had earlier failed to finish in time for the stage play, may well have encouraged commentators to complain that Rossini’s Stabat first performance in Madrid in 1833. On that occasion Rossini had asked his pupil Giovanni mater is too operatic and too stylistically lightweight to be taken seriously as sacred mu- Tadolini to set the missing movements, while omitting to inform Fernández Varela – the sic. But if an affect-laden cantilena can be accepted as an effective expression of the most state councillor and archdeacon of Madrid who had commissioned the work from him – intense emotions not only in opera but also, and more especially, in church music and in that the score was not all his. A little less than a decade later he had evidently decided to that way give voice to the truly ineffable, then these reservations about Rossini’s Stabat replace Tadolini’s contribution with a new setting of the missing movements. mater lose much of their force, not least because the composer was able to achieve a highly effective fusion of musical and theatrical effects on the one hand and, on the other, Rossini’s Stabat mater is one of the few works that its composer succeeded in completing of the rhetoric typically associated with sacred music. The Introduction opens with a low after he had bidden farewell to the operatic stage with Guillaume Tell in 1829. Problems pianissimo G on the bassoons and violoncellos before the musical line soars upwards, at with his health, his fight to obtain the pension that had been promised to him by Charles X the same time swelling to a forte. It is as if a musical curtain has been raised on one of but which was called into question by the overthrow of the king in the July Revolution of the most vivid scenes to be found in any canonical religious text: “At the Cross her station 1830 and, finally, the stylistic changes that were currently taking place on the operatic keeping, / Stood the mournful mother weeping, / Close to her Son to the last.” After a stage as the Italian melodrama mutated into French grand opera had all reinforced Ross- series of pizzicato chords the violins intone an encircling motif that symbolizes piercing ini’s increasingly pessimistic view of the world – a tragic reversal of the traditional image anguish and reminds us not a little of the chorus of lamentation of the Egyptians in Ross- of the serenely carefree composer of comic operas. ini’s biblical opera Mosè in Egitto. This orchestral introduction ends with a striking brass interjection and chromatically descending lamento figures. But let us return to the genesis of the Stabat mater. After a lengthy legal process Aula- gnier was finally allowed to publish those sections of the score that had been set by Adumbrated by the orchestra, this gesture of lamentation is taken up and developed by Tadolini, while Rossini assigned the rights to the new version, all ten movements of which the soloists and chorus. Then, shortly before the end of the movement, we once again were now by Rossini himself, to the Paris publisher Eugène Troupenas, who had already hear the opening motif on the bassoons and violoncellos, but on this occasion it is com- published his operas Le Siège de Corinthe, Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell. A private bined with interjections on the part of the chorus and soloists, in which form it is heard performance of excerpts from the work on 31 October 1841 so delighted the brothers once more shortly before the end of the final movement. Of course, Rossini stressed the Marie-Pierre-Pascal and Léon Escudier – the founders of La France musicale – that they cyclical character of all ten movements not only by explicit quotations like this one but decided to hire the Théâtre-Italien at their own expense and engage four soloists, a cho- by other formal elements, too, ensuring that the work as a whole creates a fully rounded Rosa Feola impression. These elements include a dotted rhythm that recurs again and again in the course of the piece, sigh-like motifs and open fifths on the horns that rely on the natu- ral notes of these last-named instruments’ harmonic series. As the German musicologist Klaus Döge has noted, “Rossini’s Stabat mater is a work that may have been written in two distinct stages but in performance this sense of temporal dislocation is entirely supersed- ed by compositional means alone”. If the category of culinary opera may be invoked at all, then it is the tenor aria no. 2 (“Cu- jus animam gementem”) that most obviously invites this charge, a reproach that stems from the soloist’s mellifluously memorable cantilena and his high D flat in the cadenza shortly before the end. Here and more especially in the following movement it is up to the orchestra and conductor to ensure that the accompaniment is strictly controlled and that the religious content is not corrupted by operatic intrusions. In the duet for the two female voices (no. 3: “Quis est homo”), the movement’s underlying character is essentially de- fined by the funeral-march-like support of the strings, which maintain an almost constant pianissimo in their implacable forward momentum. The bass aria no. 4 (“Pro peccatis”) has a beauty to it that already impressed Antonio Tamburini, the bass soloist in the first performances in Paris, while its tension and élan already look forward to the typical Verdian number in 3/4-time. There is also a further association with Verdi here inasmuch as a cappella sections alternate with others that are accompanied by the full orchestra, creating the same sort of delightful contrast as the one found in the younger composer’s Quattro pezzi sacri.

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