Stabat Mater (Pergolesi)

Overview

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's setting of the medieval Stabat Mater sequence for soprano and alto soloists, strings and continuo (P.77), composed in 1736 during his last illness, in a Franciscan monastery at Pozzuoli near Naples; he died the same year, aged 26. It became one of the most widely performed and printed sacred works of the eighteenth century. (Source: Wikipedia, "Stabat Mater (Pergolesi)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabat_Mater_(Pergolesi).) The work is public domain.

Marie and this work

Marie hears it in Naples in March-April 1877, in the city of its composer.

• 25 March 1877 (069.0519, 069.0527): the printed programme of the Società Filarmonica's sacred-music concert, pasted into her notebook, lists a Pergolesi solo and duet "nello Stabat" for soprano and contralto (item 5), alongside Mozart's Lacrimosa and Gounod's Ave Maria. At the concert the Duke of Melito says he prefers Les noces de Jeannette to "cette musique de Pergolèse et Mozart".
• 27 March 1877 (069.0555): "Les élèves du Conservatoire chantent Le Stabat de Pergolèse dans l'église de San Pietro à Mayella" (San Pietro a Majella, the church beside the Naples Conservatory); M. Hamontoff keeps chairs for the family. The footnote there calls it the celebrated sacred choral work of Pergolesi (1710-1736).
• 9 April 1877 (070.0298, 070.0427, 070.0442): it is sung again for Princess Margherita; its "accents divins" fill Marie's ears on the day of her crisis over Larderel; at dawn she writes that she would like to be rich enough to have the Stabat sung to her every day.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Stabat Mater (Pergolesi)" (above); IMSLP.
• Diary paragraphs as cited. Which sections were sung on 27 March and 9 April is not stated by Marie.

Supersedes the stub `people/mentioned/PERGOLESE.md` (filed as a person; the composer himself has no separate entry yet).