Rossini’s _Stabat Mater_ belongs to the large class of eighteenth and nineteenth century church-music that was dominated by operatic models and in which the devotional and serious spirit was almost wholly absent. The _Stabat Mater_ was written in 1832 at the request of a Spanish friend and dedicated to the Abbé Valera with no thought of its being published. However, when some rather romantic circumstances brought it before the public in 1841, Rossini revised it and since then, unfortunately, it has been one of the most popular of sacred works--‘unfortunately,’ because it is almost wholly irreligious in feeling and theatrical in mode of expression. As music, divorced from its text, its melodies are gay, brilliant, sensuously beautiful operatic pieces, but wholly out of place with sacred texts. The most famous of these misplaced melodies are the _Quis est homo_ for soprano, the _Inflammatus_ for soprano obbligato and chorus, and the _Cujus animam_ for tenor. The nearest approach to the religious spirit is the bass aria, _Pro peccatis_. The _Missa Solemnis_ (‘Graner Mass’) of Liszt, who seemed to love composition of sacred music above all else, brought to his conception of the mass a consecration which, even had he been less of a genius, would have assured devotional music. The so-called ‘Graner Mass’ was written for the dedication of the Cathedral of Gran, which took place on August 31, 1856. A noble atmosphere pervades the entire work and it is made especially interesting through the use of leading motives, the first instance of the kind in the history of the mass. It is not the ‘leading motive’ of the later Wagner type, but rather the employment of themes, transformed according to context and varied connection, as Liszt had developed it in _Les Préludes_ and his piano concertos. Thus the trumpet-like phrase at the beginning of the _Gloria_, reappears in the _Resurrexit_, the _Hosanna_, and the _Dona nobis_. The orchestration is rich and the music always appropriate to the text. Liszt spoke of the music as having been ‘rather prayed than composed.’ While the work shows the influence of Beethoven, it is more akin to Wagner, in that the instrumental accompaniment has a larger share in the action; this and his unusual use of thematic material give to the work added historical importance. The performance of the mass caused a controversy as to its merits and tendencies that raged for several decades. Liszt, in all that he attempted, was a reformer. His object in the field of church music was to bring about ‘an ecclesiastical musical style that should bring the liturgy of the Roman Church nearer to an intellectual and emotional expression of the age, should be in closer sympathy with existing artistic ideals as they were actually manifested in music.’[83]