Stabat Mater
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Stabat Mater is a thirteenth century Roman Catholic sequence variously attributed to Innocent III[1] and Jacopone da Todi.[2] Its title is an abbreviation of the first line, Stabat mater dolorosa ("The sorrowful mother stood"). The hymn, one of the most powerful and immediate of extant medieval poems, meditates on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother, during his crucifixion. It is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows.
It has been set to music by many composers, with the most famous settings being those by Palestrina, Pergolesi, Joseph Haydn and Gioacchino Rossini.
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[edit] Text and translation
The following translation is not word-for-word. Instead it has been adapted so as to represent the meter (trochaic tetrameter), rhyme scheme, and sense of the original text. A literal translation (word-for-word, without concern for adaptation into the target language) can be found here.
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Stabat mater dolorosa
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At the Cross her station keeping,
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[edit] Stabat Mater Speciosa
There also exists a Christmas counterpart to the Stabat Mater, entitled Stabat Mater Speciosa ("The beautiful mother stood").[1]
[edit] Musical settings
Composers who have written settings of the Stabat Mater include Josquin des Prés, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi; of the latter's setting, the German poet Tieck opined: "I had to turn away to hide my tears, especially at the place, 'Vidit suum dulcem natum'".[3] Joseph Haydn's Stabat Mater is considered "a treasury of refined and graceful melody".[4] Others who have written settings are Steffani, Clari, Emanuele d'Astorga, Winter, Raimondi, Vito, Lanza, Neukomm. In the 19th century, Gioacchino Rossini wrote his setting after retiring from the opera. Stabat, while Antonín Dvořák's setting was written when he was still active in writing secular music. Most of the settings are in Latin, but Karol Szymanowski's setting is in Polish.
Others: John Browne, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Antonio Vivaldi, Charles Villiers Stanford, Charles Gounod, Krzysztof Penderecki, Francis Poulenc, Alessandro Scarlatti (1724), Domenico Scarlatti (1715), Pedro de Escobar, František Tůma, Arvo Pärt, Josef Rheinberger, Franz Schubert, Giuseppe Verdi, Zoltán Kodály, Trond Kverno (1991), Pawel Lukaszewski (1994), Frank Ferko (1999), Salvador Brotons (2000), Hristo Tsanoff, Bruno Coulais (2005), the black metal band Anorexia Nervosa, Karl Jenkins, and most recently the Finnish (one man) Funeral Doom band Stabat Mater (2009).
- Stabat Mater (Szymanowski), by Karol Szymanowski
- Stabat Mater (Poulenc), by Francis Poulenc
- Stabat Mater (Pärt), by Arvo Pärt
- Stabat Mater (Jenkins), by Karl Jenkins
- Stabat Mater (Dvořák), by Antonín Dvořák
- Stabat Mater (ballet), ballet by Peter Martins
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ p. 103, Larrimore (2001) Mark Joseph. Hoboken, New Jersey The Problem of Evil: A Reader Wiley-Blackwell. "The Stabat Mater ... was more likely the work of Innocent III."
- ^ p. 574, Alighieri, Durling, Martinez (2003) Dante, Robert M., Ronald L. Oxford The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Purgatorio Volume 2 of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Oxford University Press. "The Stabat Mater by the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi."
- ^ Old Catholic Encyclopedia
- ^ Old Catholic Encyclopedia
- This article incorporates text from the entry Stabat Mater in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
[edit] External links
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