Pergolesi: Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater in F Minor (P.77) is a musical setting of the Stabat Mater sequence, composed by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in 1736. Composed in the final weeks of Pergolesi's life, it is scored for soprano and alto soloists, violin I and II, viola and Basso Continuo Many pieces which were said to have been composed by Pergolesi have been misattributed; the Stabat Mater is definitely by Pergolesi, as a manuscript in his handwriting has been preserved. The work was composed for a Neapolitan confraternity, the Confraternita dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo which had also commissioned a Stabat Mater from Alessandro Scarlatti. Pergolesi composed it during his final illness from tuberculosis in a Franciscan monastery in Pozzuoli, along with a Salve Regina setting, and, as it is said, finished it right before he died. This recording is based on a critical edition of the score, edited by Simone Perugini from a collaction of a lot of manuscript copies of the opera and it is performed by the baroque Fête Galante Baroque Ensemble conductd by Simone Perugini, Italian conductor specialized on Baroque and Classical Italian music of XVIIIth Century.