Rossini’s Stabat Mater is rich in inspiration and sentiment but the religious feeling – as it is usually perceived and defined – comes over weakly. The score is dominated by an almost worldly sensuality and the style and expression are dramatic and theatrical. This work brings the Maestro back into sacred music, long after having composed a Mass in his youth, on commission. The first six movements surfaced in 1832 in Madrid, and Rossini, then aged 40, had already backed out of opera three years before. However, we have to wait until the end of 1841 to see the last four parts completed in Paris (replacing six composed by Giovanni Tadolini nine years earlier, when Rossini had stopped working on it, because of health problems).
In the Stabat Mater Rossini reaches full expression by combining a severe, counterpoint style with modern opera tricks, while maintaining all the abstract charm of his poetry in music. This is music sensitive to words and action, sentimental but above all independent, absorbing all its expressive values in itself. The liturgy thus becomes theatrical in Rossini’s hands, overcoming what Alberto Basso called “the false aesthetics of a disciplined, neutral conception of sacred music”.
In March 1873, while Verdi was in Naples waiting for Aida to be staged, he composed the String Quartet in E minor simply “in his leisure moments”, and for a long time he refused to have it played in concerts. He believed that Italians had more talent for composing opera than chamber music, which the Viennese school did better. In actual fact these pages are full of operatic Verdi, from the very first theme of the Allegro, which reminds us of the music signalling Amneris’ jealousy in the first act of Aida. The third movement, Prestissimo, evokes the witches’ ballet in Macbeth and the final Scherzo anticipates the atmosphere of Falstaff. This cleverly crafted Quartetto reveals the composer’s thorough knowledge of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven’s chamber pieces. Verdi himself, even though he was not convinced of the real value of the score, was quite aware that it was not just vocal music in disguise, and he said he did know it was a quartet.

Monica Rosolen