The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

hymn to Mary Marian hymns are Christian songs focused on Mary, mother of Jesus. They are used in both devotional and liturgical services, particularly by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. They are often used in the mont ...

, which portrays her suffering as

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

's mother during his

crucifixion Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthagin ...

. Its author may be either the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

Jacopone da Todi Jacopone da Todi, O.F.M. (ca. 1230 – 25 December 1306) was an Italian Franciscan friar from Umbria. He wrote several ''laude'' (songs in praise of the Lord) in the local vernacular. He was an early pioneer in Italian theatre, being one of ...

Pope Innocent III Pope Innocent III ( la, Innocentius III; 1160 or 1161 – 16 July 1216), born Lotario dei Conti di Segni (anglicized as Lothar of Segni), was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1198 to his death in 16 J ...

.Sabatier, Paul ''Life of St. Francis Assisi'' Charles Scribner Press, NY, 1919, page 286''The seven great hymns of the Mediaeval Church'' by Charles Cooper Nott 1868 ASIN: B003KCW2LA page 96 The title comes from its first line, "Stabat Mater dolorosa", which means "the sorrowful mother was standing". The hymn is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many Western composers.

Date

The Stabat Mater has often been ascribed to

, OFM (ca. 1230–1306), but this has been strongly challenged by the discovery of the earliest notated copy of the Stabat Mater in a 13th-century gradual belonging to the Dominican nuns in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

(Museo Civico Medievale MS 518, fo. 200v-04r). The Stabat Mater was well known by the end of the 14th century and Georgius Stella wrote of its use in 1388, while other historians note its use later in the same century. In

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

, about 1399, it was used during the nine days' processions. As a liturgical sequence, the Stabat Mater was suppressed, along with hundreds of other sequences, by the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italian Peninsula, Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation ...

, but restored to the missal by Pope Benedict XIII in 1727 for the Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Text and translation

The Latin text below is from an 1853

Roman Breviary The Roman Breviary (Ecclesiastical Latin, Latin: ''Breviarium Romanum'') is a breviary of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. A liturgical book, it contains public or canonical Catholic prayer, prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notati ...

and is one of multiple extant versions of the poem. The first English translation by Edward Caswall is not literal but preserves the trochaic tetrameter rhyme scheme and sense of the original text. The second English version is a more formal equivalence translation.

Musical settings

Composers who have written settings of the ''Stabat Mater'' include: *

Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

Dvořák: Stabat Mater. Oratorio for Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra
at Supraphon website. * Orlande de Lassus (1585) * Palestrina:

Stabat Mater The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Christian hymn to Mary, which portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ's mother during his crucifixion. Its author may be either the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III.Sabatier, Paul ''Life o ...

(c.1590) *

Giovanni Felice Sances Giovanni Felice Sances (also Sancies, Sanci, Sanes, Sanchez, ca. 160024 November 1679) was an Italian singer and a Baroque composer. He was renowned in Europe during his time. Sances studied at the Collegio Germanico in Rome from 1609 to 1614. ...

(1643) * Marc-Antoine Charpentier H.15 & H.387 (1685–90) *

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (19 December 1676 – 26 October 1749) was a French musician, best known as an organist and composer. He was born, and died, in Paris. Biography Clérambault came from a musical family (his father and two of his sons w ...

C. 70 (17..) *

Sébastien de Brossard Sébastien de Brossard, pronounced e.bɑs.tjẽ də brɔ.saːr (12 September 1655 – 10 August 1730) was a French music theorist, composer and collector. Life Brossard was born in Dompierre, Orne. After studying philosophy and theology a ...

SdB.8 (1702) *

Emanuele d'Astorga Emanuele Gioacchino Cesare Rincon, baron of Astorga (20 March 16801757, by one report) was an Italian composer known mainly for his ''Stabat Mater''. Biography He was born on 20 March 1680Hans Volkmann, ''Emanuele d'Astorga'', Leipzig 1911, p. ...

(1707) * Vivaldi:

(1712) *

Domenico Scarlatti Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, also known as Domingo or Doménico Scarlatti (26 October 1685-23 July 1757), was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the deve ...

(1715) *

Nicola Fago Francesco Nicola Fago, 'II Tarantino' (26 February 1677 – 18 February 1745) was an Italian Baroque composer and teacher. He was the father of Lorenzo Fago (1704-1793).Companion to baroque music Julie Anne Sadie - 1991 "Fago. Neapolitan father ...

(1719) * Scarlatti:

(1723) * Antonio Caldara (~1725) *

Agostino Steffani Agostino Steffani (25 July 165412 February 1728) was an Italian ecclesiastic, diplomat and composer. Biography Steffani was born at Castelfranco Veneto on 25 July 1654. As a boy he was admitted as a chorister at San Marco, Venice. In 1667, ...

(1727) * Pergolesi:

(1736) *

Nicola Logroscino Nicola Bonifacio Logroscino (1698 – c.1765) was an Italian composer who is best known for his operas. Biography He was born at Bitonto (Province of Bari) in the Apulia region and was a pupil of Giovanni Veneziano and Giuliano Perugino at the ...

(1760) *

Florian Leopold Gassmann Florian Leopold Gassmann (3 May 1729 – 21 January 1774) was a German-speaking Bohemian opera composer of the transitional period between the baroque and classical eras. He was one of the principal composers of '' dramma giocoso'' immed ...

(~1765) * Haydn:

(1767) *

Giuseppe Tartini Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era born in the Republic of Venice. Tartini was a prolific composer, composing over a hundred of pieces for the violin with the majority of ...

(1769) * Tommaso Traetta (1770) * Antonio Soler (1775) * Boccherini:

(1781, 1801) *

Franz Ignaz Beck Franz Ignaz Beck (20 February 1734 – 31 December 1809) was a German violinist, composer, conductor and music teacher who spent the greater part of his life in France, where he became director of the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. Possibly the m ...

(1782) *

Pasquale Cafaro Pasquale Cafaro (also known as Caffaro or Cafariello, 8 February 1715 or 1716 – 25 October 1787) was an Italian composer who was particularly known for his operas and the significant amount of sacred music he produced, including oratorios, ...

(1784) * Schubert: Stabat Mater in G minor (1815) and Stabat Mater in F minor (1816) * Rossini:

(1831–1841) * Peter Cornelius (1849) * Liszt: part of the oratorio '' Christus'' (1862–1866) * Dvořák:

(1876–1877) * Laura Netzel (1890) * Josef Bohuslav Foerster: Op. 56 (1891–1892) * : Op. 50 (1893) * Verdi: movement of '' Quattro pezzi sacri'' (1896–1897) * Charles Villiers Stanford (1906) * Toivo Kuula (1919) *

George Oldroyd George Oldroyd (1 December 1886, Healey, West Riding of Yorkshire, England26 February 1951, London, England) was an English organist, composer and teacher of Anglican church music. He studied with the organist and composer Arthur Eaglefield Hull ...

(1922) * Szymanowski:

(1925–1926) * Johann Nepomuk David (1927) *

Lennox Berkeley Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley (12 May 190326 December 1989) was an English composer. Biography Berkeley was born on 12 May 1903 in Oxford, England, the younger child and only son of Aline Carla (1863–1935), daughter of Sir James Char ...

(1947) *

Julia Perry Julia Amanda Perry (25 March 1924 – 24 April 1979) was an American classical composer and teacher who combined European classical and neo-classical training with her African-American heritage. Life and education Born in Lexington, Kentucky, ...

(1947) * Poulenc:

(1950) * Penderecki: in '' St Luke Passion'' (1963–1966) * Pärt:

(1985) *

Knut Nystedt Knut Nystedt (3 September 1915 – 8 December 2014) was a Norwegian orchestral and choral composer. Early life Nystedt was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, and grew up in a Christian home where hymns and classical music were an important ...

(1986) *

Amaral Vieira Amaral may refer to: *Amaral (band), a music group from Zaragoza, Spain ** ''Amaral'' (album), its debut album * Amaral (surname), a Portuguese-language surname * do Amaral, a Portuguese-language surname * Amaral (crater), a crater on Mercury * Azal ...

(1988) * Trond Kverno (1991) * Pawel Lukaszewski (1994) *

Vladimir Martynov Vladimir Ivanovich Martynov (Russian: Владимир Иванович Мартынов) (Moscow, 20 February 1946) is a Russian composer, known for his compositions in the concerto, orchestral music, chamber music, and choral music genres. ...

(1994) *

Salvador Brotons Salvador Brotons (born 1959 in Barcelona) is a Catalan composer, conductor, and flautist. Early life In the year of 1967, Salvador Brotons attended the Barcelona Conservatory of Music where he received titles in his three areas of studies, whic ...

(1997) *

Frank Ferko Frank Ferko (born June 18, 1950) is an American composer. Born in Barberton, Ohio, Ferko played piano from childhood, and worked as an organist and conductor in his teens. His first compositions were primarily liturgical in nature, with Lutheran ...

(1999) * Vladimír Godár (2001) * Bruno Coulais (2005) * Jenkins:

(2008) *

Paul Mealor Paul Mealor OStJ CLJ OSS FRSA (born 25 November 1975) is a Welsh composer. A large proportion of his output is for chorus, both a cappella and accompanied. He came to wider notice when his motet ''Ubi Caritas et Amor'' was performed at the w ...

(2009, revised 2010) * metr.

Hilarion (Alfeyev) Hilarion (secular name Grigory Valerievich Alfeyev, russian: Григо́рий Вале́риевич Алфе́ев; 24 July 1966) is a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church and the current metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary. He is also a no ...

(2011) * Jean-Charles Gandrille (2014) Last choral work performed at

Notre-Dame de Paris Notre-Dame de Paris (; meaning "Our Lady of Paris"), referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité (an island in the Seine River), in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral, dedicated to the ...

(2019) *

Franco Simone Francesco Luigi Simone (born 21 July 1949) is an Italian singer-songwriter, composer and television host, known as "il poeta con la chitarra" ("the poet with the guitar") for the poetical value of his lyrics. Background Born in Acquarica del C ...

(2014) * James MacMillan (2015) *

Vache Sharafyan Vache Sharafyan ( hy, Վաչե Շարաֆյան), (born February 11, 1966 in Yerevan, Armenia) is an Armenian composer of symphonic works, chamber music, choral music and opera. His works include 2 acts opera ''King Abgar'', ballet ''Second Moon'' ...

Stabat Mater for mezzo-soprano and male choir
(2017) Most of the settings are in Latin, but

Karol Szymanowski Karol Maciej Szymanowski (; 6 October 188229 March 1937) was a Polish composer and pianist. He was a member of the modernist Young Poland movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century. Szymanowski's early works show the inf ...

's and Paul Bebenek's are in Polish, although Szymanowski's may also be sung in Latin.

's setting is in Latin but includes an English translation for Anglican/Episcopalian use.

References

External links

Website about (now) 250 different Stabat Mater compositions: information about the composers, the music and the text. The site also includes translations of the text in 20 languages.

Several English translations

Chant performed by "Exsurge Domine" vocal ensemble.

Karol Szymanowski's "Stabat Mater"
Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Thomas Dausgaard, conductor. Live concert. {{Authority control Marian hymns 13th-century hymns

Date

Text and translation

Musical settings

See also

References

External links