The 18th century French writer, Charles de Brosses described Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, completed as the composer lay dying, as ‘the master work of Latin music’. Although this is music of great tenderness and sombre beauty, the work also includes chromatic sequences, sighing passages and dramatic dissonance straight out of the operatic style that had first made Pergolesi famous. Pergolesi’s Salve Regina in C minor, also from the composer’s last few months, is written in a similarly expressive style.