Humphrey Clucas
About the composer
Humphrey Clucas was born in 1941 in Cambridge, England. As a composer, he is self-taught. As an undergraduate, he wrote a set of Responses, which made him well known within the Church of England.
His real career as a composer started much later, and has resulted in large and small choral works, for concert and liturgical use, as well as organ music and instrumental pieces. He is a Lay Vicar, and member of the choir, with Westminster Abbey.
About the Stabat Mater
| Date: | 1992 |
| Performers: | Soprano, choir and string quartet. |
| Length: | 6.26 minutes |
| Particulars: | Clucas says about this work: "I see the Stabat Mater as a very beautiful, and just slightly decadent, lyrical poem, and I wanted to set it in a single sweep. The tempo is unchanging throughout, though within this tempo there are two different sorts of music. The first eight stanzas are sung against a four-bar string passacaglia theme; when this has become almost too relentless, the texture changes, and the vocal line - now featuring the soloist - becomes more lyrical. Stanzas 14-20 repeat this shape on a smaller scale." |
| Textual variations: | The "Analecta"-version of the text is used, with following changes: |
| Colour bar: |
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Information about the recording
| CD: | Upbeat Classics URCD142: Humphrey Clucas, Crucifixus |
| More info: | Dedicated to the work of Clucas. Recorded at PATS, University of Surrey, in 1998. I bought this CD on the Internet, Berkshire Record Outlet, 2001. |
| Orchestra: | Chameleon Atrs String Quartet |
| Choir: | Laudibus |
| Conductor: | Michael Brewer |
| Soloists: | Bryony Lang, soprano |
| Other works: | Crucifixus |
| Code: | Unknown CLU 01 |
