A legend in the making: Pergolesis Stabat Mater and its

reception in England
Few other compositions have achieved a meteoric rise in popularity comparable to
Pergolesis Stabat Mater. Within a few years of its composition, the work circulated around
Europe in countless manuscript copies and it eventually became the most printed single
work in the 18th century. More interestingly, at a time when audiences primarily demanded
new compositions, the Stabat Mater started a history of performances that has continued
uninterruptedly up to current days, making Pergolesi one of the first composers who
entered the newly conceived idea of a musical canon, or repertory. And all that from a
composer whose musical career spanned a meagre six years.
As it is often the case with Pergolesis works, the genesis of the Stabat Mater is not
backed by documentary evidence. The first known account places the Stabat Mater
amongst a number of compositions finished by the composer at his deathbed whilst
staying at a Franciscan monastery in Pozzuoli, Naples, of which the Salve Regina was the
last.1. This report was later adapted by Sir John Hawkins (1691-1789) to affirm that
Pergolesi had died at the age of twenty-two, just as he had finished the last verse of a
Stabat Mater, by which he will be ever remembered.2 Pergolesis first biographer, the
Marquis of Villarosa, conveniently made use of this renewed version, one that gave a
particular significance to the relationship between the composer and his last work, in much
the same way as it happened with Mozart and his Requiem.3
According to Villarosa, the work had been commissioned by a noble Neapolitan
brotherhood, the Cavalieri della Vergine dei Dolori, to serve as a replacement for a setting
1

P. Boyer: Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Pergolse, Mercure de France (July 1772), 191.
Pergolesi had moved to the monastery early in 1736 due to a decaying health, although the fact that he left all
his estate to his aunt before the move is a strong indication that he probably never expected to recover. He
died, most likely of tuberculosis on 16 March 1736.
2
John Hawkins: A general history of the science and practice of music (London: T. Payne and Son, 1776), V,
375.
3
Marchese di Villarosa: Lettera biografica intorno alla Patria ed alla Vita di Gio: Battista Pergolese celebre
Compositore di Musica (Napoli, 1831), 25-27.

by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) in their annual vesper celebrations every Friday in

March. Clearly, the Stabat Mater, a text that originated in 14th century Italy, had already a
relevant place in the brotherhoods Marian celebrations, even before the feast of Our Lady
of Sorrows was introduced to the liturgy in 1727, when the poem was used as a sequence in
the mass.4 On the surface, Pergolesis 1736 setting share some common characteristics with
Scarlattis, of which the most obvious is the unusual choir-less scoring for two soloists and
strings.5 However, despite these superficial similarities, the newer composition displays a
more sophisticated approach: whereas Scarlatti, in the most traditional manner, assigns
one single stanza and one affect to each movement, Pergolesi occasionally combines
different stanzas within one aria and assigns different musical material to each one,
resulting in a multi-textural discourse that moves through an array of emotions without a
break in the music. This is, for example, the case in Vidit suum dulcem natum and Sancta
mater, istud agas. Examples like these are undoubtedly responsible for the
acknowledgement of Pergolesi as a forward-thinking composer.
London audiences became acquainted with Pergolesis Stabat Mater through the 1740
printed edition by John Walsh, which was also the first ever to be published.6 Considering
that most of Walshs printed editions at the time contained essentially favourite items
already heard in concert or on stage, the Stabat Mater must have come preceded by some
recognition. And, indeed, London had not escaped the rapture for Pergolesis music that
invaded Europe after the composers untimely death. No one else left a clearer depiction of
this phenomenon than music historian Charles Burney:
The instant his death was known, all Italy manifested an eager desire to hear and
possess his productions, not excepting his first and most trivial farces and
intermezzi; and not only lovers of elegant Music, and curious collectors elsewhere,
but even the Neapolitan themselves, who had heard them with indifference during
his lifetime, were now equally solicitous to do justice to the works and memory of
their deceased countryman. Rome, sensible now of its former injustice, as an
amende honourable, had his opera of Olimpiade revived: an honour which had never
before been done to any composer of the present century before. It was now
brought on the stage with the utmost magnificence, and that indifference with
which it had been heard but two years before, was now converted into rapture.7

Note that Burney although unaware of the conceptcharacteristics closely linked with the idea of a music repertoire.
historical revival of the works of a composer and, second, the
authorship so powerful that manages to increase the interest

is acknowledging two
First, an interest in the
creation of a sense of
to some compositions

Richard Will: Pergolesis Stabat Mater and the Politics of Feminine Virtue in The Musical Quarterly, vol. 87,
no. 3 (Autumn, 2004), 571.
5
See Hermine H. Williams: The Stabat mater dolorosa: a Comparison of Settings by Alessandro Scarlatti and
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Studi pergolesiani, II (1986), 144-54.
6
Giovanni Pergolesi, Stabat Mater, ed. Jrgen Neubacher (London: Ernst Eulenberg & Co, 1992), preface.
7
Charles Burney: A General History of Music, IV (London: for the Author, 1789), 554. [My underlining.]

beyond mere artistic qualities.8 It is not surprising then that Pergolesis music featured
heavily in the programmes of the most important early attempts at musical historicism in
Britain at the end of the 18th century: the Academy of Ancient Music, and the Concerts of
Ancient Music. As Michael Burden has noticed, the concept of ancient, when it first came
into use around 1700, referred to music of the 16th and 17th centuries, and only Pergolesi and
Handel, whose music was modern by these standards, stood in exception to this. 9

Opening page from the first printed edition of

Pergolesis Stabat Mater (London: John Walsh, 1740)

This is the reason why nowadays we can find complete editions and recordings of the works of, say, Mozart
that include even childhood compositions, whilst many commendable works of maturity by lesser known
composers have fallen into complete oblivion. More worryingly, only celebrity culture can be possibly
responsible for Sir Anthony Hopkins compositions featuring in the 2012 Classic FM Album of the Year at the
Classical Brit Awards.
For a thorough discussion on the creation of a musical canon in England see William Weber, The Rise of
Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992).
9
th
Michael Burden: That Romish composer: the reception of Pergolesi in 18 -century England (unpublished).
I am greatly indebted to Professor Burden for making this article available to me.

In London, Pergolesis Stabat Mater was performed in numerous concerts although,

more often than not, in an adapted version of the original, most commonly by the addition
of choral numbers. This need to reinforce Pergolesis setting may derive not only from the
common eighteenth century practice of adaptation but, as Richard Will has suggested, also
from the necessity to instil some masculinity into a work that had been regarded for better
or for worse- as primarily feminine.10
The soprano Regina Mingotti (1722-1808) can be credited with appearing in both the
first public and private known performances of the work the latter at Mrs Fox Lanes salon
as reported by Walpole in 1758-.11 Mingottis first public attempt at the Stabat Mater, in a
Concerto Spirituale at Drury Lane on 2 April 1756, also featured Felice Giardini (1716-1796)
as a soloist;12 a later similar concert with the same main protagonists at Covent Garden on
10 March 1758 included several parts made into Choruses, by Signor Giardini;13 other
performances at the Concerto Spirituale at Covent Garden on 6 and 15 March 1776 also
featured choruses, probably by Samuel Arnold (1740-1802);14 and a further performance at
Hampshire Musick Meeting in 1786, was advertised as containing choruses by J. C. Bach
(1735-1782). Unfortunately, the extent of these adaptations cannot be appreciated as no
copies with added choruses appear to survive. There is, nevertheless one more extreme
case of adaptation that has survived in a printed version: An Ode of Mr. Popes Adapted to
the Principal Airs of the Hymn Stabat Mater (published in 1761), in which Alexander Pope
(1688-1744) used Pergolesis music as the basis for an altogether new English text Vital
sparks of heavnly flame-.15
The rapture for Pergolesis music described by Charles Burney extended also outside
London, and the work featured in concerts by music societies all over the country.
However, not everyone was so enthusiastic. It is worth noting that one of the few critical
reactions to Pergolesis setting came from Charles Avison, who in his Essay on Musical
Expression, criticised Pergolesi for failing to comply with the just distinction...between the
tenderness or passion of a theatrical scene and the solemnity of devotion.16 Debates over
the appropriateness of music to the sacred environment were not uncommon in the
Baroque but Avisons comments are unequivocally biased by his desire to support a
particular style of music.
Despite the occasional criticism, the reception of Pergolesis Stabat Mater in England
was by and large a positive one. Comments like Avisons are not frequent and hardly
detract from a reality supported by facts: Pergolesis Stabat Mater soon found a place of
10

Richard Will: Pergolesis Stabat Mater, 571.

Horace Walpole to George Montagu, 4 May 1758. The Yale Edition of Horace Walpoles Correspondence, ed.
W. S. Lewis et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937-83), IX, 219.
12
Public Advertiser, 31 March 1756.
13
Public Advertiser, 3 March 1758.
14
A Concerto Spirituale, playbill for 6 March (London: [NP], 1776), and A Concerto Spirituale, playbill for 15
March (London: [NP], 1776).
15
See Burden, The reception of Pergolesi, for a more detailed account of the London performances of the
Stabat Mater.
16
nd
Charles Avison: An Essay on Musical Expression, 2 ed. (London, 1753), 94 nt.
11

prominence in concert programmes around Britain and, most importantly, it played a

pivotal role in the creation of a musical repertoire. And that gives this remarkable setting as
much historical value as musical virtues.

Miguel Esteban (October 2012)