Stabat Mater (Pergolesi) - Emma Kirkby

infocatolica.com
Stabat Mater de G.B Pergolesi, por la soprano Emma Kirkby

[@5454eleanor]

This is certainly the best version I have heard. Their voices complement each other so well and there is none of the overblown vibrato in Kirkby's voice that spoils some other recordings.

[@davidepollak3]

Pergolesi composed the Stabat Mater when he was 25, few months before his death. I can not imagine what he would do if he had lived at least until the age of Mozart.

[@Guichotpresident]

I never thought i would see the day when the greatest countertenor and the greatest soprano would sing together!

[@Lauritz1]

Ah Kirkby and James Bowman! A great combo. Bowman is a true counter-tenor. Hear how smooth his registers are and how the voice has continuum throughout and doesn't sound like a different person singing when he is in chest, mixed and head registers. Hats off and thumbs up! This is classic!

[@zetlana]

Heavenly and uplifting. Wonderful harmonies. Love the way James Bowman's (counter tenor) voice weaves in and out clinging to the notes like a bird trembling on a branch.

[@KafrosKypselis]

Pergolesi's supreme masterpiece sung by Kirkby and Bowman! It doesn't get any better than this.

[@davidacres8242]

James Bowman and Emma Kirkby; what a glorious combination.

[@Raptuza]

Yes!!

[@Kazar2020]

I had the chance of meeting them personally several time. They are also very nice people.

[@bucior1]

The best baroque piece ever recorded by the two best baroque artists!

[@nunolamas1]

The best performamce of this Stabat Mater! Superlativo!!!

[@BarrocoeBrahms]

delicious and great voices!! the best Stabat Mater I´ve ever heard, with the 2 most beautiful voices in the earth

[@2houndsdesign560]

Emma's voice is incredible. Thank you for posting Stabat Mater here for us to listen to!

[@barbfan1]

by comparison with today's performers, kirkby is a true musician who is not vain and a true mediator between composer and audience - imhop

[@daniellereid01]

This is divine. Clean and refined, it allows the true pathos of the music to shine. Thank you for posting.

[@joekeats6911]

I love this piece and the way it is sung here. An interesting thing I noticed that I have never heard anyone else mention. The alto (counter-tenor here) sings and holds the first note. Then the soprano comes in one note above making a harmonic second interval. The sound is discordant but has the effect of sounding like someone crying. Seconds are repeated several times in the this duet with great effect. Thanks for posting this.

[@kinslor]

This, for me, is the definitive recording of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. Possibly it is because it is the one I know best, but to my ear no other flows as beautifully as when Kirkby and Bowman sing together. At times their voices are like water as it flows delicately over a waterfall.

[@mpalssonur]

It's great to hear baroque music sung right. I spent ages going through recordings where the singers (most often the soprano) had way to much vibrato. This is much better! I love such clean and smooth singing.

[@bellajanie]

What lovely suspensions, and Kirkby and Bowman do them so well together. Thanks for this beautiful video.

[@dariopetrolati]

non si può far paragone con le altre esecuzioni è musica sublime e non mi frena emozione non riesco essere obiettivo dario.

[@jmiducdm]

C'est tellement parfait que c'en est indécent !!! A n'écouter qu'une ou deux fois par an...Attention à l'addiction.

[@melonitomuldez1891]

I LOVE THIS SINGER VERY ANGELIC VOICES

[@tranurse]

the first time i heard this, was on good friday 2001 or so at church during the late service. there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

[@user-kx4ni4qm9j]

Любимое Исполнение этой Волшебной Музыки!..

[@Musicienne-DAB1995]

A perfomance that is unsullied by excessive vibrato and where the words really shine through. Kirkby's high notes were blissfully clear and strong. Beautiful rendition.

[@deadwalke9588]

+TheMusicZone It is UNHEALTHY as singers to sing straight forced tone, so with that in mind, she's killing her voice by forcing her vocal cords stick together (instead of vibrate at an evenly pace.)

[@Musicienne-DAB1995]

deadwalke Really? Because she is still singing, and she should be in her late sixties right now. Besides, she does use vibrato- just not excessively, which isn't good for the voice either.

[@deadwalke9588]

+TheMusicZone Excessive vibrato is much better than a straight-toned, forced singing. You can control your vibrato by singing to the pelvic floor, NOT by forcing the larynx to go down and inward as you try to navigate without vibrato. Singing even is fine as long as you go back to using vibrato. Even most vocal pedagogicals around the world insists on using vibrato, as it's the most natural and easiest tonal production a voice can use.

[@deadwalke9588]

+TheMusicZone And just because she still sings today, doesn't really mean anything good. It means she can't give it up and it's the only thing she has left.

[@ajhiflyer]

+TheMusicZone I agree. This is how I like my music, in spite of what else is said here.

[@Klara358]

So very beautiful, so havenly and so much joy to listen to this music

[@Kverbraeken]

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was only 25 years old when he made this Stabat Mater,a few months later,when he was 26,he died....

[@eduardobarrezueta5247]

I thought he died when he was 27. Any way every time i hear this very part of the Stabat Mater i remember the brazilian soap opera Xica da Silva.

[@filomena362]

Magnifique !

[@BarrocoeBrahms]

it´s still the best version of this Stabat Mater!! Beautiful!

[@icantpirrouette13]

i'm so excited!!! my choir is doing this and i'm first soprano!!!! we are gonna kick some lesser choir booty!!!!!!!!

[@celticboy1950]

So beautiful, so enchanting, very moving.

[@nunolamas1]

The best version of this Stabat Mater

[@sppencer]

really not

[@Carlounet100]

Selon moi, la meilleure version entre toutes sans discutions possible. De très grands interprètes. Je peux vous dire, pour l'avoir côtoyer un peu, que James Bowman est un grand monsieur et ce dans tous les sens du terme. ce qui ne gâte rien.

[@sergyortega]

I think, that this is the most beautiful version of Stabat Mater by Pergolesi; Miss Kirkby and Mister Bowman, have the style to sing this music; in this show, thier performance is really great; by the way, this version is absolutly respectful of original partiture, for that reason I love it. Greetings, SERGIO

[@edmonddantes6486]

Very beautiful and majestic. Bowman is wonderful. I recall such sublime feeling in the phenomenal countertenor ANDREY NEZMER singing SAINT FRANCIS PRAYER. The only one who is a match to Bowman.

[@johnelv]

At the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. Christ above in torment hangs, she beneath beholds the pangs of her dying glorious Son. Is there one who would not weep, whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ's dear Mother to behold? Some of the most powerful words ever written, set to music by one of the greatest, and sung by THE greatest!

[@ReginaMuse93]

1:45 - That's the kind of place I would love to sing in!

[@ottiliaiten9950]

Very, very beautiful!

[@joycedusoleil]

Pergolesi me recuerda mucho a Xico, y a mi llegada a Xalapa... tiempos aquellos :(

[@unperplexed]

Thank you John Bence of Leicester for introducing me to this music.

[@BellezaesDios]

So real and true. Really touching.

[@PiscatorMedia]

Just wonderful!

[@logidmetabeta]

increiIncreíblemente y hermosamente desplegada, realmente se puede sentir la realidad de la teoría de los afectos, mas que nada es una composición con algo de melancolía y una pizca de promesa, junto con tragedia, pero al final se despliega en toda su expresión como una tragedia, tengo que postular además que, no sabiendo de lo que se habla, puedo decir a viva voz que esta obra debe de estar relacionada con lo antes descrito.

[@fjfb1001]

Exquisite.

[@michaelmartin4144]

Bellisimo

[@MrAndrePBC]

C'est génial!

[@Guichotpresident]

@golaxo Bowman of course!!!

[@marcusvinicius7510]

Que a Mãe divina nos abençoe.

[@mtouvent]

Fantastic

[@jokeosewoudt307]

Deze uitvoering met Emma Kirkby en James Bowman is onovertroffen.

[@berniewa2008]

Emma Kirkby and the instrumental ensemble are great as everytime. Also James Bowman does his part very well, though I maybe would prefer a singer like Deborah York as partner of E. Kirkby

[@leodepuydt308]

One may have to be Signed In to Google to read all about Pergolesi’s uniqueness. There are five (5) sections I-V to my KZbin posting. And since III comes in IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc, that is in effect seven (7) sections. ABOUT THE TRANSCENDENTAL UNIQUENESS OF PERGOLESI’S MUSIC: AN ESSAY (PART II) _by_ Leo Depuydt _To the Memory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741-1813), and Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783), Unconditional Admirers and Lovers of the Eternal Pergolesi’s Music, Comrades-in-Arms_ (_Continuation of the main text in Part I._) First are the six features that set apart Pergolesi from his teacher Durante according to Pergolesi, as follows: 1) _L’allievo Pergolese_ [Correction!: Pergolesi always signed his name “Pergolesi”] _all’opposto era pieno di estro e vivacità;_ 2) _accoppiava insieme lo stilo forte ed armonioso ne’_ repieni _delle voci_ 3) _con un_ accompagnamento _instrumentale_ [sic]_, che sempre cantava;_ 4) _mosse naturali dei bassi per lo più_ camminanti _, che anch’essi cantavano;_ 5) _un passeggiar di tuoni semplice e regolare, ma sempre rintracciando nuovi sentieri;_ 6) _e quindi se qualche volta mostravasi lungo anzi che no, pure non attediava._ de Rosa’s description continues with features that first (_primo_) manifested themselves in Pergolesi’s music in his opinion, as follows: 7)_Egli si fu il primo, cui venne in pensiero vestire qualche_ Aria _di un accompagnamento_ instrumentale _diverso dalla_ cantilena _dell’attore,_ 8)_egli il primo che tra i due violini intrecciasse due motivi diversi;_ 9)_egli il primo che pose in campo il_ semitonare _cantando;_ 10)_in somma egli il primo che spogliasse la_ cantilena _delle_ ariette _dal difficile e secco dello Scarlatti, e cercasse, per quanto fosse possibile, adattarla alla passione, che destar dovevano le parole, onde coll’espressione del cantante si commovesse il cuore di chi ascoltava. Dotato dalla natura di un cuore sensibilissimo, non iscrisse un verso di musica, che non corrispondesse alle parole, che volle animar con forza e finezza, consultando sempre la natura, e la verità, …._ I classify the rest of this sentence as an eleventh characteristic: 11) _... senza far uso di quelle fragorose modulazioni, che simili alle fugitive meteore, abbagliano talvolta gl’ignoranti, ma che tosto svaniscono e nel nulla restan sepolte._ A more detailed discussion of this unparalleled characterization of Pergolesi’s music is desirable. The need is for illustrating each with concrete musical examples. The examples are very much present to me. But I do not know exactly as to how to present it. The fact remains that there is nothing like Pergolesi’s music anywhere. Meanwhile, here is a provisional English translation of de Rosa’s epochal text (now completely forgotten, I again note): “(1) His (Durante’s) student Pergolesi was, by contrast, full of whim (¬_estro_) and vivacity, (2) which he combined with his (Durante’s own) strong and harmonious style of voices singing all together [that is, in _¬tutti_], (3) and also with instrumental accompaniments that always sing, (4) as well as with natural movements by the basses that almost always march on while also singing, (5) and moreover with a progression of notes that is simple and regular while always tracing new paths. (6) And so when he (Pergolesi) sometimes expressed himself at greater length (‘rather longer than shorter’), he never caused boredom”. (On to the features that the Marquese believed Pergolesi to be the first to exhibit in the history of music.) “He was (1) the first who came up with the idea of adorning an aria with an instrumental accompaniment that differed from the melody of the actor, (2) the first who made the two violin parts intertwine two different motives, (3) the first to put into the field the singing halftone, (4) in sum the first who stripped the sing-song of the arias from the difficult and dry properties of Scarlatti’s arias and sought as much as possible to adapt it to the passion that the words are designed to excite so that the heart of the listener moved along with the expression of the singer. Gifted with the nature of a most sensible heart, he never wrote a verse of music that did not correspond to the words, which he wished to animate with strength and finesse, always consulting with nature and truth,” (and classifying the following property separately) “without using the deafening modulations that, like fleeting meteors, at times dazzle the ignoramuses but before long vanish and remain buried in nothingness”. I hope to discuss these characteristics in detail at a later time. I am not sure about how to convey musical examples.

[@lynnerieh]

Is it Andreas Scholl singin with Emma Kirkby? Its absolutly divine.. close to perfection.

[@Welshbookworm]

No, it's James Bowman.

[@savioalves1234]

Is is not an aria why just the sopranos name is in the title?

[@michaelmartin4144]

Hard and clinical

[@Mavritivs_CF]

Is not Andreas Scholl, is the great James Bowman with Emma kirkby and Christopher Hogwood conducting

[@helenaburton9566]

divine!!!!! and i', atheist.....but I AM A MOTHER..... this is about the pain of a mother who lost her child ....

[@ajanekera]

They sound great together. Sculpture at the beginning is beautiful, but I don't like the rest of this video. It would be better to show more art connected to the title. Thank you for posting this video - I didn't hear this version before, and I love it!

[@m42288]

No I'm 99% sure it's Christopher Hogwood

[@carbonepaolo]

E' quasi inquietante come lo Stabat Mater di Pergolesi riecheggi nel Requiem di Mozart, scritto quassi 60 anni più tardi e, anche quello, in punto di morte...

[@ModernBrandon]

he doesn't sound like another person when he's in his "chest voice" because he never enters his chest voice.

[@BUDAWIEN]

Who sings alto?

[@BUDAWIEN]

Thanks

[@Marcus-xs3ee]

James Bowman.

[@JasonJason210]

Goose pimples.

[@giogio1392]

La Dea esiste. Dio no.

[@SanctumZero]

@iQuaereVerum Haha, you obviously have no understanding of the Internet ;D

[@leodepuydt308]

One may have to be Signed In to Google to read all about Pergolesi’s uniqueness. There are five (5) sections I-V to my KZbin posting. And since III comes in IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc, that is in effect seven (7) sections. ABOUT THE TRANSCENDENTAL UNIQUENESS OF PERGOLESI’S MUSIC: AN ESSAY (PART IIIb) _by_ Leo Depuydt _To the Memory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741-1813), and Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783), Unconditional Admirers and Lovers of the Eternal Pergolesi’s Music, Comrades-in-Arms_ (_Continuation from Part IIIa_.) APPENDIX: SUPPORTING MATERIALS APPENDIX, SECTION Ib: Historical Notes on the Appreciation of Pergolesi’s Music (_continued_) This much about Pergolesi’s style. But what about his reputation? I select often cited testimonies by the great philosopher J.-J. Rousseau (1712-1778), the great mathematician and student of the physics of music, J. Le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783), the great contemporary French composer J.-Ph. Rameau (1683-1764), and-who else-the eternal J. S. Bach (1685-1750) himself, none of them Italians by the way. There have been detractors, a number of Germans and some English, some bitter. Perhaps, at some point, someone will be able to find out what to make of it all. But before adducing the testimonies in question, a unique property of G. B. Pergolesi’s legacy may be pointed out. It appears that, of the compositions that have been attributed to him at one point or another, perhaps 80% or 90% are not by him. There is nothing anywhere close to it in the history of music. As regards the testimonies anticipated above, J.-J. Rousseau-who himself composed respectable music-called G. B. Pergolesi “inimitable (_inimitable_)” [9]. All culminates, evidently, in G. B. Pergolesi’s _Stabat mater_, composed just before his death. The analogy has very often been made with W. A. Mozart’s (1756-1791) _Requiem_, which he composed on his deathbed. Did J.-J. Rousseau exaggerate when he called the opening duet of G. B. Pergolesi’s _Stabat mater_ “the most perfect and the most touching that has ever come from the pen of any musician”? [10] According to J. Le Rond D’Alembert, G. B. Pergolesi was the “Rafael of Italian music” [11]. There was much discussion in the eighteenth century as to whether either French or Italian opera music was superior. In that regard, A. E. M. Grétry reports that J.-Ph. Rameau, this paragon of French music in the eighteenth century and the successor to the Italian-born French composer J.-B. Lully (1632-1687), confided to his friend the Reverend Arnaud when he was about 60 years old, that, if he were 30 years younger, he would travel to Italy and compose in the style of G. B. Pergolesi [12]. But he felt that he was too old for change. What about that for a confession? And then there is J. S. Bach. To my knowledge, the only work that he copied and adapted from another composer in full orchestration, and not just in a conversion for keyboard, is G. B. Pergolesi’s _Stabat mater_. A fitting tribute indeed. J. S. Bach schoolishly completes harmonies, adding the fourth note. But it is a matter of taste whether the result is an improvement. G. B. Pergolesi has been adduced above as 1) a metaphor for style, and then 2) for rediscovery, and then also 3) for excellence. But there is more. He also stands for the dawning of a new age and the arrival of modernity. The focus is on Naples, once the second(?) largest city of Europe and the world, a city still known for its vibrant music scene, as evidenced in a recent motion picture by the actor and director J. Turturro. Thousands and thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of music manuscripts rest in the libraries of Naples and of several European capitals. It is a huge legacy that is only in recent decades is beginning to be rediscovered in earnest. The neglect is owed in great part to the fact that, since G. B. Pergolesi’s time, Naples and Italy’s Mezziogorno have known episodes of decline and neglect. There is much to be said for the notion that modern music came into its own in the early eighteenth century in Naples, finally completely moving away from the polyphony of the Renaissance, and G. B. Pergolesi was part of this new development. Polyphony has its masterworks. But to the modern ear, it has a certain otherworldly quality. The new Neapolitan style was known as the “sweet new style (_dolce stil nuovo_)”. G. B. Pergolesi surpassed all other composers in the practice of it. In contrast to some other composers, he for the most part avoids ostentation through the coloratura that is so well known from the vocal music of the baroque period. Indeed, a principal virtue of G. B. Pergolesi’s music is its simplicity-to the extent that many have been surprised how music that looks so simple on the page can sound so good when performed. The Neapolitan style was the beginning of a new era that stretches all the way to the present day. Music reached a new and final plateau and that is where it stayed. True, music later became more sophisticated in all kinds of ways pertaining to composition, performance, and instrumentation. But I do not believe that much of it clearly surpasses the Neapolitan style in beauty. What is more, music lost all its humor in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, protagonists do not at great length and spectacularly die in eighteenth century operas. That is a relief. The Neapolitan style still remains relatively less known in spite of the revival of recent decades. Accordingly, one comes upon statements here and there in various media by those who, when encountering it accidentally, are a little perplexed as to how they missed it. One limitation of the style in question is that its achievements are mostly in vocal music. Its contributions to instrumental music are limited. L(eonardo) Leo’s (1694-1744) six concertos for cello are an exception rather than the rule. This means that knowing Latin (for the sacred music) and Italian (for the secular music), sometimes the Neapolitan dialect of Italian for comedic operas (_opera buffa_), much increases the appreciation of the music in question, and especially of G. B. Pergolesi’s music. The language factor may form a bit of a barrier and prevent the music in question from breaking out from a certain niche. And evidently, to appreciate G. B Pergolesi’s sacred music, it is necessary to realize that it is very, very Catholic. In higher learning, it is always enlightening to know who influenced whom. By analogy, in the quest for an appreciation of G. B. Pergolesi’s style, it helps to listen to those that were close to him in place, time, and person, those three main coordinates of the human condition. Just two striking anecdotes. Ch. Burney transmits the following first anecdote. As a rebellious 14-year old who had just mastered the traditional fine points of composing, G. B. Pergolesi wanted his friends to take him home so “that he might indulge his own fancies, and write such Music as was most agreeable to his natural perceptions and feelings” and that “[t]he instant he quitted the conservatorio, he totally changed his style, and adopted the style of [L(eonardo)] Vinci [(1690-1730)] . . . and of [J. A.] Hasse [(1699-1783)]” [13]. L. Vinci, the first great master of the _dolce stil nuovo_, is to be distinguished from L. da Vinci (1452-1519), he of the Mona Lisa, who may have been distantly related I read somewhere. The anecdote explains something about G. B. Pergolesi’s unique originality. L. Vinci died in 1730, perhaps poisoned, just when G. B. Pergolesi began composing, and could not have been influenced by him. I refrain from detailing reports that J. A. Hasse, who composed prolifically both before and after G. B. Pergolesi’s short creative life (1730-1736), changed his style after becoming acquainted with G. B Pergolesi’s music. A special case is L(eonardo) Leo (1694-1744). He comes closest in style in many ways to G. B. Pergolesi. He ain’t G. B. Pergolesi. But still, his music constantly pleases and it exhibits many, many moments of exceptional beauty and simplicity combined. Music reached a pinnacle in early eighteenth century (early _settecento_) Naples. Has this pinnacle ever truly been surpassed? A second anecdote is as follows. G. B. Pergolesi admired his older contemporary L. Leo as a mentor. L. Leo may have been the first to truly master counterpoint, I read somewhere, but I leave that to musicologists. I see one more possible indication of a new age dawning. According to one account, G. B. Pergolesi invited L. Leo to a performance of his Mass in F, upon completion of which L. Leo warmly and openly embraced him and highly praised him [14] [15]. Once familiar with G. B. Pergolesi’s style, L. Leo began imitating it, like other older Neapolitan composers, sometimes copying him almost note by note [16]. L. Leo was once famous all over Europe. How many have heard of him nowadays? Still, there has been a little bit of a revival. (_Continued in Part IIIc._)

[@leodepuydt308]

One may have to be Signed In to Google to read all about Pergolesi’s uniqueness. There are five (5) sections I-V to my KZbin posting. And since III comes in IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc, that is in effect seven (7) sections. ABOUT THE TRANSCENDENTAL UNIQUENESS OF PERGOLESI’S MUSIC: AN ESSAY (PART IIIa) _by_ Leo Depuydt _To the Memory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741-1813), and Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783), Unconditional Admirers and Lovers of the Eternal Pergolesi’s Music, Comrades-in-Arms_ APPENDIX: SUPPORTING MATERIALS APPENDIX, SECTION Ia: Historical Notes on the Appreciation of Pergolesi’s Music It needs to be said-and it needs to be repeated-about the composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736): _Pergolesi rappresenta quello che è veramente importante in Italia: Eccellenza in nome dell’eccellenza._ Style is everything, _dixit_ G.-L. Leclerc (1707-1783), Comte de Buffon, who actually said, “The style is the man (_Le style c’est l’homme même_)”. In that regard, G. B. Pergolesi (1710-1736) is a true inspiration. The celebrated traveler, author, and musician Ch. Burney (1726-1814), father of the novelist Fanny Burney, described G. B. Pergolesi’s music not only as singularly clear (_chiaro_), simple (_semplice_), and true (_vero_), but also as sweet (_dolce_) [1]. In this connection, the Belgian composer A. E. M. Grétry (1741-1813), who won great acclaim at theaters and the royal court in France, who wrote the music for Voltaire’s funeral, and whose body is buried at the famed Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris while his heart rests in a shrine below a statue of him towering in front of the Royal Opera of Wallonia in his native Liège in Belgium, famously stated the following about G. B. Pergolesi in his Memoirs [2]: _Pergolesi was born and the truth was known (Pergolèze naquit et la vérité fut connue)._ G. Radiciotti fittingly put this statement on the title page of the first edition of his biography of G. B. Pergolesi [3]. A street is named after A. E. M. Grétry in the center of Brussels, Belgium. And a restaurant in this street even bears the name of his memoirs. G. B. Pergolesi’s most ardent admirer, A. E. M. Grétry, seems to have suffered a fate even worse than the subject of his admiration. One just wonders how many patrons of the afore-mentioned restaurant “The Memoirs of Grétry” in the Grétry Street in Brussels know who A. E. M. Grétry was. A remarkable property characterizes the personality and the work of G. B. Pergolesi. After a long interlude of oblivion, his star has been-relatively speaking-sharply on the rise in the last 30 to 40 years or so, accelerating rapidly especially in the 1980s and 1990s, most of the acceleration occurring after my undergraduate years and much of it even after my graduate work. This means that, when I was a student, there would have been little incentive to recognize G. B. Pergolesi as a prime paragon of Western civilization. And in fact, my own interest in his personality and his work has been the result of chance encounters in recent years. I happened to hear his incomparable _Stabat mater_ a few years ago just by accident. Very nice. But I assumed that he was a “one-trick-donkey” who had died young. Little did I know until about two years ago. There has been a flurry of activity roughly in recent decades, accelerating in the 1980s and the 1990s. This activity includes world premiers in modern times of many musical works including his seemingly forgotten operas, conferences devoted to him, a new series entitled “Pergolesi Studies/Studi Pergolesiani”, research centers founded in New York and Milan, and a guide to research [4], to which I refer for more detail. B. S. Brook, F. Degrada, H. Hucke, D.E. Monson, M. E. Paymer, C. Toscani, and others have been at the forefront of the revival of Pergolesi scholarship. It may be noted in the margin that the music by A. E. M. Grétry has also made something of a comeback. And, in general, period interpretations of baroque works have been on the rise. For half of my life, the second Brandenburg concert was almost never played on natural baroque trumpets. Now, using a natural trumpet is _de rigueur_. It will be useful to buttress what has been said before, first, by detailing G. B. Pergolesi’s style a little more and second by showing that the revival of his music is not a fluke in the sense that-while there have been his detractors, some ardent-many others have considered his music unsurpassed and some even unparalleled. Four observations on style. First, “natural” is a property that I should have added to the characteristics of G. B. Pergolesi’s style already mentioned above and also elsewhere. According to A. E. M. Grétry [5], _the truth of declamation constituting [G. B. Pergolesi’s] songs is as indestructible as nature (la vérité de déclamation qui constitue ses chants, est indestructible comme la nature_). Second, G. B. Pergolesi is in my opinion on quite a few occasions just ever so subtly mischievous (_birichino_ in Italian?) in a way that I only rarely discern in the music of other composers. It seems to mean that he does not take himself too seriously. And that is good to know. Third, citing an eyewitness account gathered in the course of his travels in Italy, Ch. Burney describes G. B. Pergolesi as a “slow composer” [6]. His biographer G. Radiciotti interprets Ch. Burney as stating that the composer was “an accurate worker using a file ([_un_] _lavoratore accurato e di lima_)” [7]. This seems like a mistranslation improving on the original. But the fourth characteristic has been the most inspiring, to me at least. It is the way in which G. B. Pergolesi’s lines of melody (supported by an accompaniment that never takes control but impeccably does all it possibly can to enhance the melodic line) run from the very beginning to the very end without a single note being out of place, and all this with-at almost every turn-plenty of originality and unexpected and interesting twists that surprise but never either disrupt the line or displease. Originality by itself could be classified as yet a fifth characteristic. G. B. Pergolesi’s melodic lines stand as a metaphor of how one would like an intellectual argument to proceed. Again, style is everything. D. Monson has established that the composer “wrote the music for the vocal line before writing the bass and accompaniment” [8]. In the same way, the stepwise rigorous intellectual coherence of the main line of an intellectual argument is paramount. (_Continued in Part IIIb._)