In this interview with Our Sunday Visitor, I gave props to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36). “It is in many movements and probably not viable as a liturgical piece. But as pure musical expression, it is a revelation.”
What is your favorite?
Fantastic performance of the Stabat Mater. Read the notes from Voices of Music on the YouTube page. Very interestering, especially the "deconstructing Pergolesi" section.
I enjoy the William Cornysh Salve Regina – especially for the unusually high soprano part. : )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0XCyEREmKI
Check out the setting for the Salve Regina which has become the signature hymn of Pere Andre Gouzes at the abbey of Sylvanes in France. It can be found on Youtube. Sublime.
A beautiful piece. Just curious – in what chuch was this recorded? It is simply beautiiful.
When the feast of seven sorrows was made universal in the eighteenth century, the text was prescribed as the sequence of the Mass, but apparently no melody was provided. Thus, if you look at graduals from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, you may find yet a different melody in each book. The present melody derives from a source of the fifteenth century, but was only provided in the modern books.
On Good Friday 1993 I was in Prague and after the solemn afternoon Liturgy of the Passion in the great baroque church of St James – there was an interesting local custom in which the Bl. Sacrament was brought from the altar of repose in a monstrance covered in a lace veil, with beating of clappers and the chanting of the Vexilla Regis – the choir and orchestra (and it was a large orchestra, I counted five horns) performed Dvorak's Stabat Mater. The church was packed, and I had to sit on the marble steps of a side altar. It got colder and colder, but what an experience!
I was back there for Easter Sunday when the same choir and orchestra did all the movements of Dvorak's Mass in D, with a schola in the sanctuary delivering the Propers. Standing room only, and a very long homily in Czech of which I understood not a word; thankfully the rest of the Mass was in Latin.
I would have to say that the Richard Hygons Salve is one of the most glorious I've ever heard and I would do that one over the Pergolesi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI2WazTO0iw
However if we're talking about a Stabat Mater I think that the Josquin is beyond comparison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4k-Mv9FvOk
Sorry, but every time I hear this (and admittedly it's a favorite hymn), I cannot help but "hear" Whoppi Goldberg et al singing this in Sister Act….boogie woogie version.