A few years ago, it was my dear grandson Guido who persuaded me to start a real YouTube channel, to promote the Stabat Mater collection. So, in January 2020 we uploaded the first video: the Red Brotherhood in Ceriana (Italy) going through the narrow streets and little alleys of the medieval village while singing Stabat Mater on Good Friday. YouTube seemed to be a valuable complement of the Ultimate Stabat Mater Website. Since then visitors on our website could not only read about the composition but also listen to it.

In three years we uploaded 300+ video’s. Today we added the Stabat Mater by Jacobus Regnart, a Dutch composer from the 16th century. Regnarts Stabat Mater is video number 353!
It’s so interesting to learn about the most popular ones. Isn’t it remarkable that the most popular Stabat Mater on our channel is an album titled Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs. It has 5700 views! The composer and soloist is Fairuz from Lebanon. She was born into a Christian family. Her father was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. The tracks are all sung in Modern Standard Arabic!

One of my all time favourites is Franco Simones Stabat Mater. He is an Italian singer-songwriter, composer and television host. Listening to his Symphonic Rock Opera Stabat Mater I was completely flabbergasted by the melodies, the rhythm, the voices, the intensity!

Guido also taught me making playlists on YouTube. A playlist of women composers in our collection has Alissa Firsova , almost on top. She is a Russian-British classical composer, pianist and conductor. Born (1986) in Moscow into a family of composers, she moved to the UK in 1991. She is followed by Sulpitia Cesis the first female Stabat Mater composer (1619) in our collection.

Of course there is a playlist of Pergolesi. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is undoubtedly not only the best known but also the most performed and most recorded one. This work seems to have inspired many composers to imitate, paraphrase and adapt. For example take a look at two perfomances with modern dance from Cape Town and Amsterdam.

Did you never visit our YouTube channel? Please, go on a trip through seven centuries of music, watch and listen! Support us for free and subscribe to our Stabat Mater channel!