The ultimate Stabat Mater site

a musical journey through the ages...

New: Jacob Cooper

Thanks to Christine Read I got acquainted with Jacob Coopers Stabat. She wrote to me:

On my way home from work last night, I turned on the local classical radio station in the middle of a composition that was unlike anything I had heard before. I’ve learned that I can often hear something unfamiliar at late hours, and yesterday was no exception. They were playing Jacob Cooper’s Stabat Mater Dolorosa. It was so beautiful and moving that I stopped at a quiet place and just listened to the rest of it in the dark. It moved me to tears, particularly in these times of stress and worldwide tragedy. Please add it to your collection, if possible. 

Both works on this album take as their starting point a single moment from an older work (Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Caprice no 6 in G minor by Paganini) and through processes of repetition, distortion and in the case of the Stabat mater, extreme slow-motion, create a completely new soundscape.
For me the most remarkable feature of this CD is the text. It does not focus on the Virgin Mary’s grief about Jesus’ death but on maternal grief about the loss of her daughter!

Missing Cds: Bernasconi

On the web page Missing Cds you will find a list of over 400 composers who may have composed a Stabat Mater that never has been recorded or even never has been performed. It always makes me happy to delete one from the list as I did recently with Howard Blake and Nicola Logroscino.
Andrea Bernasconi, a composer on my list, was born in Italy, in 1706. Andrea started his career in Italy but in 1755 he was appointed to the post of Kapellmeister at the Bavarian court in Munich where he produced several operas, a few symphonies and a great deal of church music. The manuscripts of the church music were preserved in the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in Munich until 1944, when the entire collection was destroyed by Allied bombing. Fortunately a few of the sacred works survived in other libraries, including two settings of the Stabat Mater in C minor and G minor. This is what I learned from Mr. John A. Rice who contacted me about Bernasconi. Mr. Rice is a music historian and he is responsible for the YouTube channel Settecentista. The primary aims of his videos are two:
1) to help listeners learn the conventions–melodic, harmonic, and formal–that underlie eighteenth-century music; and 2) to introduce listeners to the musical delights and analytical insights that await them as they go beyond the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
He is working on an edition of the two Stabat Mater settings, which (as far as he knows) have not been performed since the eighteenth century. John Rice was so kind to share this video with me. For me it is interesting to have a first hearing of the opening movement in a ‘virtual performance’ which we, John Rice and me, hope will encourage choral conductors to perform it ‘live’.
NB: The words in capital letters above the music refer to voice-leading schemata as introduced by Robert Gjerdingen in his book “Music in the Galant Style.” Some of the terms (such as Prinner and Sol-Fa-Mi) were introduced by Gjerdingen in his book; others (such as Lully and Le-Sol-Fi-Sol) were introduced by others, including John Rice.

Stabat Mater in film

Mrs Stine Balslev from Denmark pointed my attention to the soundtrack of a German TV mini series Eight Days. She thought most of the lyrics on the album are from the Stabat Mater text. She recognised a few words and wanted to look up the full text – that was how she found the website. I listened the soundtrack on Spotify carefully (it’s worth listening, I love it!) and indeed several tracks seemed to be based on the Stabat Mater text, like the tracks Trafficker, Passion and Horus. The text is sung by the wonderful soprano Caroline Adler. When I tried to find out more information about the lyrics in Eight Days I realised there are many examples of Stabat Mater text in films (and in my collection!) and I would like to mention them now.
Ennio Morricone, famous for the soundtrack for Once upon a Time in the West, composed a Stabat Mater for the film Il Sorriso del grande Tentatore (The Smile of the great Temptator).
The first movement of Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater has been used in the soundtrack of The talented Mr.Ripley.
The Stabat Mater by Stefano Lentini has been composed for the film The Grandmaster (2013) by Wong Kar-Wei.
The soundtrack of the George Lukas film THX 1138 contains a small Stabat Mater, composed by Lalo Schifrin. It starts with a line from the first part of Pergolesi’s work, but then develops into a gloomy orchestral work. It plays during the end credits.
The film Cactus by the Australian director Paul Cox is also said to have Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater on the soundtrack, but I do not know which parts have been used. And there are more films that used parts of Pergolesi’s Stabat in the soundtrack such as Jésus de Montréal (by Denys Arcand), Smilla’s Sense of Snow, (Billy August), Amadeus (Miloš Forman) and Mirror (by Andrei Tarkovsky).

David Reichelt is the composer of the soundtrack of Eight Days. This is the story: A 60 kilometer wide meteor is on collision course with Earth. The anticipated strike zone is right in the middle of Europe. Estimated survival rate: Zero. The United States try to knock the meteor off course with nuclear weapons, but fail. All of Europe is on the run. A family do whatever they have to do to survive when the world spins out of control.
And here is the Stabat Mater track:

Stabat Mater, Rock Opera?

Thanks to Mr. Antonio Nardi from Italy I learned about a new Stabat Mater ‘style’, composed by the Italian singer-songwriter, composer and television host, Franco Simone. Listening to his Symphonic Rock Opera Stabat Mater I was completely flabbergasted by the melodies, the rhythm, the voices, the intensity! Its accessibility is striking, a modern opera with a text from the 13th century. I love it! About his work, Franco Simone says:

Fascinated by the dazzling beauty of the various Stabat Maters delivered to the history of Great Music, first of all those of Rossini and Pergolesi, for about thirty years (it had become a kind of idea fixed) I repeated to my friends that I also wanted to compose a Stabat Mater of mine, without copying anything, simply letting myself be guided by my passion. The story of the pain of the Virgin before the Son on the cross for me has become a metaphor for the pain of an entire humanity lost in a planetary restlessness.

Franco Simone has used the complete Stabat Mater text, all twenty stanza’s are sung. There are ten parts, every movement consists of two stanza’s. He composed his Rock Opera for three voices and orchestra. Franco himself is one of the singers, the other two singers are Anglo-Italian tenor Gianluca Paganelli and rocker Michele Cortese. Unfortunately I could not get or buy a CD. But you can listen and watch the video here:

New: Flagello and Carr

Courtesy of Mr. Hubert Maillard from Switzerland I could add two new Stabat Mater compositions to my site.  The first one is by Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994) who composed a Stabat Mater just as a part of a composition dedicated to Martin Luther King titled  The Passion of Martin Luther King, a combination of five texts from the Latin Liturgy and excerpts of the famous speeches by Martin Luther King like In the Struggle for Freedom, We have got some difficult Days ahead and I have a Dream.

 

The second one has been composed by Paul Carr (born in 1961). Paul Carr was commissioned by the English Arts Chorale in 2017 to write the Stabat Mater which received its World Premiere on this CD. Paul Carr has divided his Stabat Mater in six movements. He gave them English titles:
I At the Cross, II Who would not weep? III O thou Mother, fount of love! IV All I ask of thee,         V Thy grief divine, VI In Paradise with Thee.
The last movement is the longest and begins with a reiteration of the words of first stanza (Stabat Mater Dolorosa). I listened to his Stabat many times because I love it!

Federico Bruno

Federico Bruno contacted me and informed me about the special history of his Stabat Mater composition. Federico was born in Rome and when he was a child he sang as a soloist in the Choir of the Sistine Chapel. After his childhood he has been writing and recording songs that combine a blend of pop, rock, industrial and electro music. From 1997 to 2003 Federico lived  in the USA where he produced several albums, like Pure Child (2001) and Here (2008).
In 2013 he made a radical choice for a life devoted to simplicity and poverty, to the work of the land in Armenzano of Assisi (Umbria). That’s where the story of his Stabat begins:

It was the fall of 2014, on Mount Subasio, in Armenzano of Assisi (Umbria) where I lived, (my radical choice of life devoted to simplicity and poverty; to the work of the land) when a melody began to “torment me”. I thought it was reminiscent of my studies as a child when I sang as a soloist in the Choir of the Sistine Chapel in the eighties, so much so that it seemed foreign to my compositional style. After a long time chasing success in the field of rock (with modest results) since two years I was convinced never to return to writing or playing music… READ MORE

I listened to his Stabat several times, I love its simplicity and intensity. Federico has used the complete Stabat Mater text (the ‘Vatican’-version). His composition has fourteen parts, just like the fourteen stations of the cross. The video shows artwork (of plaster and gold in wood) made by Federico himself. It is the story of the Via Crucis in fourteen parts. It is like a booklet, where Jacopone da Todi’s text is accompanied with the Gospel passages and the illustrations of the relative stations.
You can watch/listen the complete Stabat as well as read the story of the making of here.
Federico was kind enough to give me permission to post a part of the video on my site and on my YouTube channel. Here you can listen to part III O quam tristis et afflicta. Thanks very much Federico.

New: In Sorrow’s Footsteps

I was recently again surprised by a present from Mr. Hubert Maillard from Switzerland. He sent to me the CD by the Marian Consort: In Sorrow’s footsteps. The CD has a new Stabat Mater composer, Gabriel Jackson from the UK. Thank you very much Mr. Maillard!

Celebrating its tenth anniversary with its tenth recording, The Marian Consort plays to its twin strengths in a lovingly conceived programme coupling two pillars of Renaissance polyphony with twenty-first-century settings of the same texts, including a newly commissioned Stabat Mater by Gabriel Jackson. A range of subplots – Palestrina’s influence on Wagner, Charles Burney’s collecting of Allegri and Palestrina – make this truly a story of interconnections: a path on which the present’s footsteps constantly overlay the past’s. At the centre is Allegri’s Miserere, whose convoluted reception history itself becomes part of the story and whose performance here fully exploits the world-famous acoustic of Merton College’s chapel.
From: https://www.marianconsort.co.uk/product/in-sorrows-footsteps/

Pergolesi’s Stabat with saxophones

I would like to write a post, at last, about my favourite ensemble playing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. It has been a long time (I think in 2006) since I visited  their performance for the first time.  Since then I have visited their concerts almost every year, in many churches all over the Netherlands, in the period around Easter. For years this project, titled the Pergolesi Ensemble, has been led by alto Marianne Selleger. By her side is singing Wendeline van Houten, soprano. The accompanying instrumental ensemble consists of saxophones in stead of strings! Apart from a few minimal adaptations, they remain true to the original composition by Pergolesi. And although, as I wrote in one of my lasts posts, Pergolesi  is the best known, most performed and most recorded one, I love this sax version very much. I love the ‘painful’ sound of the saxophones because they fit perfect with the grief of the poem. In 2009 I added their CD with Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in 2009.
In 2020 the Pergolesi Ensemble is playing Pergolesi’s Stabat in Amsterdam, Austerlitz, Oosterleek, Hellendoorn, Zaltbommel, Bussloo en Diepenveen. More information on the website: http://www.pergolesi.nl.

PIETÀ from Portugal

I got in touch with Mr. Eugénio Rodrigues, a Portuguese composer who lived and studied in the USA before moving back to Portugal, where he lives in Lousã, the town he grew up in. For information on his work and his biography, please visit his website at http://eugeniorodrigues.com/?cat=65.
In 2002, Eugénio was deeply impressed by a series of eight small paintings by the Portuguese artist Paula Rego in the chapel of the Palacio de Belém, the official residence of the Portuguese president in Lisbon. The canvases depict the life of Virgin Mary. He decided to compose music which should reflect those eight paintings and he started looking for texts with a connection to the paintings. That is how he came across my Ultimate Stabat Mater Website and he got the idea to compose a version of the Stabat Mater. However, after considering the contemporary character of Paula Rego’s work, he soon decided not to use the Latin text, but to look for more recent texts instead. He found wonderful poems by Miguel Torga, a 20th century Portuguese poet, that could fit his purpose, along with poems by other Portugese authors.
At this time he had recently moved to Lousã, where there is a Sanctuary to Our Lady of Mercy. This inspired him to compose the first section of his composition, titled PIETÀ, based on one of Paula Rego’s paintings, and a poem by Miguel Torga.
PIETÀ had its premiere in November 2019 in Lisbon by Nova Era Vocal Ensemble. Eugénio told me that various choirs from all over the world, from South Africa, the US, Canada to Greece, Spain and Portugal, have approached him for the score and are planning to perform it.
PIETÀ is scored for SATB a cappella choir, soprano soloist and includes percussion that can be played by choir members. Eugénio is now looking for funding to complete the other seven sections which will form his ‘Stabat Mater’.

I am grateful that Eugénio was kind enough to share the information about his composition with me and that he sent me the video of the performance. Please listen to PIETÀ!

New: Wishful Singing

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.

In 1997 I created the Ultimate Stabat Mater website for Hans with the program FrontPage. At that time he had around 40 Stabat Mater CDs. His notes on the composer, the music, the texts and translations and the different versions all came online. After this he managed the site by adding new composers and translations regularly. At the time of his death in 2005 he had 211 Stabat Maters. After his death I continued collecting the information and managing the site. I wish to thank the Dutch Stabat Mater Foundation which gave me the financial support in 2014 to renew this site!