What do Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Mozart’s Requiem have partially in common? Both works, when first composed, were left incomplete by the composer, and had to be finished by a collaborator. But there the similarity ends, because, eventually, Rossini did complete the work himself, having recovered, unlike Mozart, from his illness.
It was commissioned in Spain in 1831, but the first performance of the work in 1833 was also its last in its hybrid form, with only 6 movements by Rossini and the rest by Giovanni Tadolini, (albeit passed off by Rossini as his own work). By 1841 Rossini managed to compose the rest of the work himself, and that is the music we hear today.
It is a lively work, in Rossini’s engaging style, though devotional in mood and somewhat less operatic than his secular output. Even so, it drew scathing criticism from the young Richard Wagner, and was found to be “too worldly, sensuous, too playful for the religious subject” by North German critics. By contrast, it was enthusiastically received at its premiere in Paris, and its second performance in Bologna in 1842. It is scored for four soloists and chorus and orchestra. The text is a 13th century hymn to the Virgin Mary, contemplating her Son’s death on the cross. It has been set by great composers from Palestrina onwards, right up to the present day. In 2017 the St. Albans Bach Choir performed the version by Dvorák.
The other work in this concert, Vaughan-Williams’s Serenade to Music, is a setting, originally for 16 soloists, of words from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. It was composed as a tribute to Sir Henry Wood on the 50th anniversary of his Promenade Concerts, and first performed under Wood’s baton in 1938. Vaughan Williams subsequently arranged the work for four soloists plus choir and orchestra, and that is the arrangement performed in this concert. It is, as its title suggests, a powerful evocation of music’s art, in Vaughan Williams’s very personal style, and a corner-stone of 20th century English choral music.