Saturday, April 5th, 2025
Haydn Stabat Mater - Jersey Chamber Choir
St Luke's Church, La Route du Fort, JE2 7PA, St. Luke's Church, Jersey, A17, St Saviour, JE2 4BF, Jersey
Details
Stabat Mater Dolorosa, often referred to as Stabat Mater, is a 13th-century hymn to Mary, variously
attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi and to Innocent III. The title of this sorrowful text is an incipit of the first line, Stabat mater dolorosa (The sorrowful mother stood) and is one of the most powerful and immediate of extant medieval poems, meditating on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother, during his crucifixion. It is sung liturgically on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows and has been set to music by many composers; settings by Pergolesi and Rossini possibly the most famous. The hymn was well known by the end of the 14th century, but was suppressed, along with hundreds of other sequences, by the Council of Trent. It was restored to the missal by Pope Benedict XIII in 1727 for the Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This setting of the text by Haydn was composed in 1767. It is in fourteen movements, and could be considered a forerunner of the Seven Last Words, another depiction of Christ on the Cross. The work properly belongs to Haydn's "Sturm und Drang" (literally "storm and stress") style, along with some of the great middle-period symphonies and his more dramatic settings of the mass.