Deryk Barker wrote:

>Geoffrey Gaskell wrote:
>
>>I hereby nominate Rossini's "Stabat Mater" as one of the saddest of all
>>musical compositions.
>
>Sad that a great composer should think a comic opera the appropriate
>format for this text?
>
>Personally I find this one the funniest compositions.  But I don't think
>Giacchino intended it to be so.

I'm with Deryk on this one -- I too find it funny.  Especially "Cuius
animam", which sounds like a sort triumphal polonaise (despite of the
different meter) written with extraordinary panache.  I wonder what the
reactions of the contemporaries were.  Even though in the late 18th/early
19th centuries there were quite a few requiem masses written in major
keys (mostly E flat major), Rossini's Stabat mater is a little bit too
much.

Disclaimer: I do like Rossini, I really do.

-Margaret Mikulska