I started learning a new piece for my second year of intermediate singing lessons — Vidit Suum from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. It’s challenging, lyrical, and completely absorbing. From the very first notes, I knew it would push me — both technically and emotionally.
Pergolesi (1710–1736) was an Italian Baroque composer who died very young, at just 26. Despite his short life, he left a powerful musical legacy. Stabat Mater was composed near the end of his life and is a sacred Baroque work, sometimes described as a cantata or hymn setting. It’s devotional and meditative — a series of 12 short movements for soprano and alto soloists with strings and basso continuo. The text reflects Mary at the foot of the Cross, grieving for her son, and the music mirrors that sorrow. The continuo, usually played by a keyboard instrument like a harpsichord together with a cello or bass, provides the harmonic and rhythmic foundation, supporting the singers and keeping the music flowing.
“Vidit Suum” is one of the soprano solo movements, intimate and emotionally charged. It’s beautiful, but it challenges me in multiple ways: long, flowing phrases that test my breath control; delicate ornamentation and Baroque phrasing; and finding the balance between pure tone and expressive depth.
I’ve spent hours breaking it down: studying the music, noticing where my breath needs to stretch, where the phrasing needs to bloom, where I can let the sorrow come through without collapsing under it. Baroque ornamentation and dynamics add another layer of challenge — not just singing the right notes, but making them live, making them feel.
Practicing this piece reminds me why I keep studying singing. It’s more than technique. It’s stepping into someone else’s world, a world of beauty, of loss, of human feeling that has survived hundreds of years.
Even as a single movement from a 12-part work, Vidit Suum feels whole. I love this challenge. I love how it asks for patience, focus, and empathy — and gives it back in richness and depth.
This is what keeps me going. One movement, one phrase at a time, connecting to centuries of music and to my own voice.
These are the lyrics
Vidit suum dulcem natum,
moriendo desolatum,
dum emisit spiritum.
And the translation
She saw her sweet Child
dying in desolation,
while He gave up His spirit.
Kiki's Memos 