Musical Moments #17
Stabat Mater - Gioacchino Rossini - Movements “Quando Corpus” and “In Simpiterna”
“Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music.”
Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
The composer Rossini was a real character who lived life large, both figuratively and literally. In addition to his renown as a composer, he was a gourmet and gourmand. He wrote to a friend; “I know of no more admirable occupation than eating, that is, really eating. Appetite is for the stomach what love is for the heart...Eating, loving, singing, and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life...”
Although his compositions were rather formulaic, during the height of his popularity Rossini could easily crank out a number of full-length operas in a year. He was known to write sitting in bed, and if he dropped the piece of music he would simply start another tune rather than lose time to retrieve the paper. One of his eccentricities was witnessed by Sir Arthur Sullivan, who upon a visit to Rossini heard him saying very seriously, “It’s my dog’s birthday, and I write a little piece for him every year.”
Rossini’s operas had popular appeal and made him a very wealthy man. At the time of his death he was worth $1.5 million in 1868, considerably more by today’s standards. But at age 37 after the success of William Tell, he suddenly stopped composing. The only two works he wrote in the remaining thirty-nine years of life were sacred pieces, Stabat Mater being one of those. And he probably wouldn’t have completed this work if not for someone trying to publish it unfinished without his permission. Many theories exist as to why Rossini stopped writing, but the three leading conjectures are that he didn’t need the money, he was lazy, or he had some uncomfortable medical conditions.
I would guess it was a little bit of each.
My favorite story of Rossini’s unconventional personality involves his paying an organ grinder to play a tune of his on the street for hours under the window of a rival composer and telling the young man, “It may be, that, afterwards, he will learn how to write music.”
He was well-acquainted with many fellow composers and their music and even visited Beethoven, where he was greeted kindly and told “You should only compose comic operas.”
The two movements of Stabat Mater presented today, the last two of the work, could not be more different in style: “Quando Coprus” translated, “When my body dies, grant that my soul is given the glory of Paradise.” The second excerpt, “In Sempiternal,” not taken from the traditional Latin text, is simply translated as, “Everlasting life through eternity. Amen.” The unaccompanied “Quando Corpus” section is mostly gentle and mournful, while “In Simpiterna” possesses fugal fireworks until it restates the quiet theme of the opening, only to return to the incendiary mode again at the end. Rossini was criticized for making this “sacred” work too operatic, to which he responded that he was a composer of opera buffa and that “Rossini must write like Rossini.”
Every accomplished choral musician loves to sing Stabat Mater, which explains why it falls into the standard repertoire category for the Bach Choir and Orchestra. The recording you are hearing today comes from a 1998 performance featuring soloists Henriette Schellenberg, Mary Ann Hart, Curtis Rayam, and Daniel Lichti.
On a personal note, thank you Mr. Rossini for my introduction to classical music: “William Tell Overture,” dispensed under the guise of the theme to “The Lone Ranger,” and Bugs Bunny’s “Rabbit of Seville.” One thing for sure, he could write entertaining and memorable melodies.
-John V. Sinclair
“Beethoven was a prodigy of man, but Bach is a miracle of God.”
Gioacchino Rossini
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