Stabat Mater (Rossini)

In 1831 Rossini was traveling in Spain in the company of his friend the Spanish banker Alexandre Aguado, owner of Château Margaux.

In the course of the trip, Fernández Varela, a state councillor, commissioned a setting of the traditional liturgical text, the Stabat Mater.

[1][2] When Varela died, his heirs sold the work for 2,000 francs to a Parisian music publisher, Antoine Aulagnier, who printed it.

A week before the scheduled concert Robert Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik carried the pseudonymous essay, penned by Wagner under the name of "H. Valentino", in which he claimed to find Rossini's popularity incomprehensible: "It is extraordinary!

[6] The Stabat Mater was performed complete for the first time in Paris at the Théâtre-Italien's Salle Ventadour on 7 January 1842, with Giulia Grisi (soprano), Emma Albertazzi (mezzo-soprano), Mario (tenor), and Antonio Tamburini (baritone) as the soloists.

"[2] In response the French music historian Gustave Chouquet has remarked that "it must not be forgotten that religion in the South is a very different thing from what it is in the North.

"[4] The Stabat Mater is scored for four vocal soloists (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass), mixed chorus, and an orchestra of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

[citation needed] The first theme in "Cujus animam" was also quoted note-for-note in the 1941 Woody Herman jazz number, "Blues on Parade".