Festival für Alte Musik Knechtsteden - Stabat Mater - Pergolesi & Traetta

In the organizer's words:

19:00 Introductory talk in the monastery library.‍

Countless composers have set the medieval sequence Stabat Mater dolorosa to music, from Josquin Desprez and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to Krzystof Penderecki and Arvo Pärt. But probably the most famous version dates back to the 1930s. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died at the age of just 26 in the spa town of Pozzuoli near Naples after an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of tuberculosis. He spent the last months of his life there in a monastery, where he worked diligently on his Stabat Mater. Until then, he had had a stellar career as a composer, and his operas in particular were popular with audiences both at home and abroad. After his early death, however, it is the Stabat Mater that makes his name immortal to this day and becomes the most copied work of the time shortly after his last breath. A version with choral additions by his contemporary Benjamin Cooke is performed in Knechtsteden.

Tomasso Traetta must also have known the piece. In Italy and Vienna, he is regarded as a reformer and opponent of Christoph Willibald Gluck. In 1767, the forty-year-old proved just how expressive his style was with his opulent Stabat Mater for the Munich court - entirely in the tradition of Pergolesi.

Price information:

29/23/19/10* € / reduced 22/18/12/8* € plus booking fee *with restricted view