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