Two voices, strings and harpsichord

Futrell's Stabat Mater consists of 11 movements. Part 1 (Prelude: bouncing bows render wooden beams into a cross) and part 3 (Interlude) are instrumental parts. Futrell's Stabat Mater allows us to explore the evolution of Stabat Mater compositions over the past 600 years. For instance, he quotes music by Barber, Górecki and Brahms in part 10, a lullaby set to lines from an old Lament on the Holy Cross.
The composition is an effort to balance on a knife's edge where the beautiful and the painful, the gentle and the brutal can coexist. Even the most romantic passages tremble ominously in the constant awareness of the terrible sorrow that lies just beneath the surface. Thus, the most harmonious string passages are quickly transformed into dragging, shrill cries of lamentation, while the most beautifully pure singing suddenly, without warning, breaks into the desperate rattle of a wounded animal.
Futrell asks himself in the booklet accompanying the CD: "Why is 'Stabat Mater' – the grotesque story of the son executed in front of his mother – always accompanied by the most beautiful, romantic music?" ... and he composes a horrifying and moving piece of music, ending with unsettling crunching sounds to remind us that the reality is not the glorious Paradise, but a dead man hanging on a piece of wood.

The "Analecta"-version of the text has been used. Not all 20 verses of the traditional Stabat Mater sequence are used in Futrell's composition. Movements 7, 10, 15, and 19 have been omitted from the Latin text. However, movement 10 takes a unique approach: instead of using the Latin Stabat Mater text, Futrell incorporates a medieval Polish text from the 15th century Lament świętokrzyski, translated in the CD booklet as "Lament of the Holy Cross."