Moore’s Stabat is a part of her composition Lux Aeterna: Vivid, commissioned by November Music Festival in association with the Hieronymus Bosch Foundation for the city of ‘s Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. It is a Requiem. The text is based upon the Latin Mass for the dead. Part III is Stabat Mater (stanza 14 and 15). The Stabat Mater part is simple and spiritual. Minimal music with excellent singers!
The CD is titled What about Mary? Wishful Singing brings an ode to the most versatile woman ever: Maria. The five singers prove that Maria is an important source of inspiration for their music and wisdom.
New: Osvaldo Guidotti
I just added another Italian composer Osvaldo Guidotti. Barbara Seppi from Germany was kind enough to inform me about Guidotti’s Stabat Mater and sent it to me for free. Thank you very much!
The cover of the CD booklet ays:
Osvaldo Guidotti, Stabat Mater
Il canto del dolore e dell’ amore
(translation: the chant of pain and love)
Guidotti composed his Stabat Mater on the occasion of the 450th anniversay of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome.
New: Anonymous from Poland
This Stabat Mater, from the album Bogarodzica (Mother of God) is a Polish anonymous melody by vocal ensemble Jerycho. The songs on the album have been dedicated to Mother Mary. Mr. Marcin from Poland was kind enough to point me to this album. Indeed, it’s a very special edition. The CD-booklet is a real book of up to 60 pages! It’s a shame I can’t read Polish!
New: Howard Blake
I just added a new composer to my site: Howard Blake with The Passion of Mary. Mr. Hubert Maillard pointed me to this CD. His Stabat Mater is a part of Blake’s second oratorio, titled The Passion of Mary. In Part 3 the first ten stanza’s of the Stabat Mater text have been used. The London premiere was in 2008 in Cadogan Hall. Here is some information about the complete composition:
Part 1: Visitation, Nativity and Childhood (Mary, Prophet, Simeon, Jesus as a boy and Choir).
Part 2: Temptation in the wilderness , Sermon on the Mount, Crucifixion (Satan, Jesus as a man, and Choir).
Part 3: Stabat Mater Dolorosa (Mary and choir).
Part 4: Resurrection, Salve Regina (Mary, Soloists and Choir).
New: Angelo Comisso
I just added the Stabat Mater by Angelo Comisso. Angelo Comisso did not only use the Stabat Mater text. Part 7 is titled Nell’apparir del sempiterno sole composed by Francesco Soto de Langa (16th century) and rearranged by Comisso Stabat Mater. I did some research and I think it is a Christmas song.
Though I am not a real Jazz-fan, I love it, because of the trumpet and piano solo’s and improvisations. And the womens’s choir is great! I contacted Mr. Angelo Comisso about his Stabat and he told me he wanted to compose his Stabat Mater as a tribute to all mothers in the world, to reflect the pain of a mother losing her son. Every day and in every corner of the world we have “Stabat Maters”, grieving for the loss of their children.
Mr. Hubert Maillard pointed me to this CD.
Mater Dolorosa and Anna Akhmatova
Through my Ultimate Stabat Mater Website I frequently receive messages from music lovers, musicians or composers about performances, recordings and compositions of the Stabat Mater. It always make me happy but I was extra surprised when Mr. Richard Blackford from England contacted me. He informed me he had been commissioned by the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra to compose a Stabat Mater and it was only when he came across four poems by Anna Akhmatova that a completely different approach occurred to him. So he had not just used the Latin text but combined it with some poems of Anna Akhmatova from her cycle Requiem, written in 1938, the Stalin-period, when her son Lev had been arrested and in prison for a long time. Indeed, I was surprised because, years ago, I got a Stabat Mater by Georgi Dmitriev (from Russia) in my collection and he too did use the Requiem poems by Akhmatova in his Stabat Mater. I told Richard about Dmitriev’s composition. We came in contact and I decided to attend the London premiere of his Stabat Mater on October 19th in the Cadogan Hall where I had the opportunity to meet Richard in person.
I had an exciting, wonderful evening! I was deeply impressed by Blackfords Pietà. He chose this title after revisiting Michelangelo’s statue in St. Peter’s in Rome. In the program book Richard says: I had seen it many times when I had lived in Rome, it was the luminescent beauty of the marble that struck me this time. How could something so sad , so poignant in its expression of a mothers grief for her son, be at the same time so beautiful, so inspiring of hope?
Please listen to Richard Blackford discussing his Pietà.
Finally, I have to confess something. When I was back home again I was looking for my Dmitriev CD and I found out that Dmitriev did not use a single word of the Stabat Mater text except the title of his composition: Stabat Mater Dolorosa!
New: Niels la Cour
Mr. Hubert pointed me to several CD’s missing on my site. I just added one: Niels la Cour from Denmark composed in 2005 three Marian songs for mixed choir: Totra pulchra es, Stabat Mater and Regina caeli. Only two stanza’s (1 and 9) are sung. The Stabat Mater song is only 2.28 minutes. From the booklet:
Niels la Cour has reworked the famous Stabat Mater hymn en miniature and picked out a few individual verses which he juxtaposes in two very different textural types. He stages the emblematic introductory words of the piece “Stabat Mater Dolorosa”, in a decidedly dolorous madrigalistic harmony. Then Mary’s sorrowful vision of her son on the cross is conjured up in ghost like quickly fading fugato. From there the movement leaps to the beginning of the second half of the hymn , which praised the motherly love of Mary. Here La Cour unfolds a grand optimistic-sounding fugato followed by stepwise-descending melismata towards an open cadence that leads back to the torment of the “Stabat Mater”.
New: Lukas Borzik
I added a new Stabat Mater by Lukáš Borzík from Slovakia. Mr. Hubert Maillard was so kind to bring my attention to this CD. In the booklet the composer says:
This Stabat Mater brings three different points of view on the Mother who stood by her dying Son. They are expressed by three motifs of different emotional timbre – the motif of lament, motif of pain and the motif of silent sorrow – stated in the bass solo. The slow alternations of the widening and narrowing metro-rhythmic pulse of the composition forms a kind of analogy to the visual movement towards the suffering of the Mother of God and/or the movement away from the invisible wounds hidden deeply in her heart.
Lukas Borzik is number 282 in my collection of Stabat mater composers (on CD).
New: Nicola Logroscino
And again I can delete a name from my list of Missing CDs: Nicola Logroscino!
Thanks to Mr. Hubert Maillard from Switzerland. He was so kind to send me, as a gift, this CD with Stabat Mater by Nicola Logroscino, an Italian composer from the 17th century. His Stabat Mater reminds me very much of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. One part impressed me, it is the duet ,em>Vidit Suum dulcem natum</em>. It’s only one minute but I love it.
Thank you very much Mr. Maillard!
Jan Engel
I just added Jan Engels Stabat Mater. For a long time Jan Engel was on my list of missing CDs. Thanks to Mr. Lee I could add this CD to my collection. He sent the CD to as a gift. He wrote:
…I happened upon the Stabat Mater site many years ago and searched out many of the titles listed here. I always wanted to contact Hans and let him know how much I appreciated his work but unfortunately I never did. Kathy and I wanted to send you this CD of Jan Engel’s Stabat Mater to show our appreciation to you for continuing the site…
