Ex. 8-2: 1. Stabat Mater

The opening movement of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater (RV 621), scored for solo alto (or countertenor), strings, and basso continuo. Commissioned by the parish of Santa Maria della Pace in Brescia and premiered there on 18 March 1712, during the liturgy of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Vivaldi had traveled to Brescia with his father Giovanni Battista, a violinist.

After the premiere, the work was forgotten for over two centuries. It was rediscovered in the 1920s in a large collection acquired by the National Library of Turin, and restored by Alfredo Casella. Casella conducted its revival in September 1939 at the Vivaldi Week in Siena.

Vivaldi sets only the first ten of the twenty stanzas of the medieval hymn. The music for movements 4–6 reuses the accompaniment of movements 1–3 — possibly due to a short composition deadline, but the repetition gives the work a sense of unity. As a Catholic liturgical piece, women were forbidden from singing it; the alto part was originally performed by a castrato or falsettist.

A piano transcription was featured in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley and in Akira Kurosawa's 1991 film Rhapsody in August.

Boccherini's Stabat Mater is also in this app. (Ex. 8-4: No.2 Cujus animan. by Luigi Boccherini)