Sunday morning , March 14th, I stumbled into a Dutch radio program with classical music. I listen fascinated to an accordion and a cello playing the for me so familiar accompaniment notes of the Quando Corpus from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Two instruments are enough to feel the desolation that Pergolesi put on paper in notes.Not …
New: Emperor Leopold I
We just added the Stabat Mater by Emperor Leopold I (1640 – 1705), son of emperor Ferdinand III. He lived in Vienna. As a child he was taught the harpsichord and received lessons in composition from his Director of Music at his Court Chapel. He spent the sum of 60,000 gulden yearly on his court …
New Italian Stabat by Giacomo Sellitto
Giacomo Sellitto (Naples , July 28, 1701 – Naples , November 20, 1763) was a Italian composer, of both sacred music and music for the theatre, and singing teacher. Naples was one of the main musical centres of Italy and even of Europe in the first half of the 18th century. The music of so …
Vincent Persichetti, a non-professional recording
Vincent Persichetti (1915 – 1987) was an American composer, teacher and piano player from Philadelphia. His musical education began early though neither of his parents were musicians. Persichetti started at the Combs College of Music at the age of five, where he studied piano, organ, double bass and later music theory and composition (Read more on Wikipedia!). Besides many …
Arabic Good Friday songs by Fairuz
Mr. Max Elia was so kind as to bring our attention to an album titled Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs which he bought on an trip to Beirut many years ago. We succeeded in getting the cd and were so impressed by the voice of the soloist (and composer) Fairuz from Lebanon. The tracks are …
New: Rémond and Tanguy
We just added two new French composers to the collection: Eric Tanguy’s Stabat has been written in memory of Vivaldi’s Stabat, which he heard as a child. This piece is for him one of the most beautiful works there is…
Artwork Ton Verstraten
Through the colourful banners at the top, the renewed Ultimate Stabat Mater website has got a new look. The banners are fragments of paintings by Ton Verstraten, a Dutch painter and sculptor. On April 6th in 2012, I took pictures of these paintings during the exhibition Passion in Oirschot. I was struck by the colours …
Dialogue between Mary and Christ
On this webpage: https://www.aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/04/stond-wel-moder-under-rode.html I discovered a medieval English song: Stand well, Moder, under Rode. You can find this song in several manuscripts after 1250. It is modelled directly on the 11-stanza Latin sequence Stabat juxta Christi crucem.The song invites, like the Stabat Mater, to sympathize with Mary and her Son, dying on the cross (rode). …
Stabat Mater on barrel organ
Mr. and Mrs. Lee from Baltimore were kind enough to inform me about an extraordinary cd with a Stabat Mater: plain song in alternation with organ, the famous restored barrel organ in the church of St. Chaffrey! In this Stabat Mater, the organ parts sound like a Mozart opera and the final parts, after stanza …
Pergolesi’s dancing Stabat during lockdown
A friend of mine who lives in Cape Town has always been interested in and supportive as for my Stabat Mater website. He told me about a special Pergolesi Stabat Mater performance with dance by Cape Town Opera, Cape Town City Ballet and Camerata Tinta Barocca. This project provides an emotional and artistic response to …
