The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

hymn to the Virgin Mary that portrays her suffering as mother during the

crucifixion Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the condemned is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam or stake and left to hang until eventual death. It was used as a punishment by the Achaemenid Empire, Persians, Ancient Carthag ...

of her son Jesus Christ. Its author may be either the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders in the Catholic Church. There are also friars outside of the Catholic Church, such as within the Anglican Communion. The term, first used in the 12th or 13th century, distinguishes the mendi ...

Jacopone da Todi Jacopone da Todi ( – 25 December 1306) was an Italian people, Italian Franciscan friar from Umbria. He wrote several :it:Laude (Jacopone da Todi), ''laude'' (songs in praise of the God, Lord) in the local vernacular. He was an early pionee ...

Pope Innocent III Pope Innocent III (; born Lotario dei Conti di Segni; 22 February 1161 – 16 July 1216) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1198 until his death on 16 July 1216. Pope Innocent was one of the most power ...

.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 Our Lady of Sorrows (), Our Lady of Dolours, the Sorrowful Mother or Mother of Sorrows (), and Our Lady of Piety, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows or Our Lady of the Seven Dolours are Titles of Mary, names by which Mary, mother of Jesus, is referr ...

. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

composers.

Date

The Stabat Mater has often been ascribed to

(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 The gradual ( or ) is a certain chant or hymn in liturgical Christian worship. It is practiced in the Catholic Mass, Lutheran Divine Service, Anglican service and other traditions. It gets its name from the Latin (meaning "step") because i ...

belonging to the Dominican nuns in

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

(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 is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which stretches from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the France–Italy border, Italian border to the east; it is bordered by the Mediterrane ...

, about 1399, it was used during the nine days' processions. As a liturgical

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is cal ...

, the Stabat Mater was suppressed, along with hundreds of other sequences, by the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent (), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most ...

, but restored to the missal by

Pope Benedict XIII Pope Benedict XIII (; ; 2 February 1649 – 21 February 1730), born Pietro Francesco (or Pierfrancesco) Orsini and later called Vincenzo Maria Orsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 May 1724 to his death in ...

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 notat ...

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 In English poetry, trochaic tetrameter is a meter featuring lines composed of four trochaic feet. The etymology of ''trochaic'' derives from the Greek ''trokhaios'', from the verb ''trecho'', meaning ''I run''. In modern English poetry, a troc ...

rhyme scheme and sense of the original text. The second English version is a more

formal equivalence Dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, in translation and semantics, are the principle approaches to translation, prioritizing respectively the meaning or the literal structure of the source text. The distinction was originally drawn by ...

translation.

Indulgence

To the ''Stabat mater'' was attributed the

indulgence In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (, from , 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins". The ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'' describes an indulgence as "a remission bef ...

of ''100 days'' each time it was recited.

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. * John Browne (composer) * Richard Davy * William Cornysh *

Orlande de Lassus Orlando di Lasso ( various other names; probably – 14 June 1594) was a composer of the late Renaissance. The chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school, Lassus stands with William Byrd, Giovanni Pierlui ...

(1585) *

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de V ...

: Stabat Mater (c.1590) * Giovanni Felice Sances (1643) *

Marc-Antoine Charpentier Marc-Antoine Charpentier (; 1643 – 24 February 1704) was a French Baroque composer during the reign of Louis XIV. One of his most famous works is the main theme from the prelude of his ''Te Deum'' ''H.146, Marche en rondeau''. This theme is st ...

H.15 & H.387 (1685–90) * Louis-Nicolas Clérambault C. 70 (17..) *

Sébastien de Brossard Sébastien de Brossard (; 12 September 165510 August 1730) was a French music theorist, composer and collector. Life Brossard was born in Dompierre, Orne. After studying philosophy and theology at Caen, he studied music and established himself ...

SdB.8 (1702) * Emanuele d'Astorga (1707) *

Antonio Vivaldi Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist, impresario of Baroque music and Roman Catholic priest. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lif ...

: Stabat Mater (1712) *

Domenico Scarlatti Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque music, Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical peri ...

(1715) * Nicola Fago (1719) *

Alessandro Scarlatti Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (2 May 1660 – 22 October 1725) was an Italian Baroque music, Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most important representative of the Neapolitan sch ...

: Stabat Mater (1723) *

Antonio Caldara Antonio Caldara ( – 28 December 1736) was an Italian Baroque composer. Life Caldara was born in Venice (exact date unknown), the son of a violinist. He became a chorister at St Mark's in Venice, where he learned several instruments, probab ...

(1725) * Agostino Steffani (1727) * František Tůma (1704-1774) (5 different settings) *

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Giovanni Battista Draghi (; 4 January 1710 – 16 or 17 March 1736), usually referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (), was an Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and organist, leading exponent of the Baroque; he is considered one of the g ...

: Stabat Mater (1736) * Nicola Logroscino (1760) * Florian Leopold Gassmann (1765) *

Joseph Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( ; ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ...

: Stabat Mater (1767) *

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

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

Luigi Boccherini Ridolfo Luigi Boccherini (, also , ; 19 February 1743 – 28 May 1805) was an Italian composer and cellist of the Classical era whose music retained a courtly and '' galante'' style even while he matured somewhat apart from the major classi ...

: Stabat Mater (1781, 1801) * Franz Ignaz Beck (1782) * Pasquale Cafaro (1784) *

Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; ; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a List of compositions ...

: Stabat Mater in G minor (1815) and Stabat Mater in F minor (1816) * Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga (1821?) *

Gioacchino Rossini Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote man ...

: Stabat Mater (1831–1841) * Peter Cornelius (1849) *

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...

: part of the oratorio '' Christus'' (1862–1866) * Antonin Dvořák: Stabat Mater (1876–1877) * Laura Netzel (1890) * Josef Bohuslav Foerster: Op. 56 (1891–1892) * : Op. 50 (1893) *

Giuseppe Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi ( ; ; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for List of compositions by Giuseppe Verdi, his operas. He was born near Busseto, a small town in the province of Parma ...

(1897) *

Charles Villiers Stanford Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic music, Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was ed ...

(1906) *

Toivo Kuula Toivo Timoteus Kuula (7 July 1883 – 18 May 1918) was a Finnish composer and conductor of the late-Romantic and early-modern periods, who emerged in the wake of Jean Sibelius, under whom he studied privately from 1906 to 1908. The core of Ku ...

(1919) * George Oldroyd (1922) *

Karol Szymanowski Karol Maciej Szymanowski (; 3 October 188229 March 1937) was a Polish composer and pianist. He was a member of the modernism (music), modernist Young Poland movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century. Szymanowski's early w ...

: Stabat Mater (1925–1926) * Johann Nepomuk David (1927) *

Lennox Berkeley Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley CBE (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 ...

(1947) * Julia Perry (1947) *

Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among th ...

: Stabat Mater (1950) *

Krzysztof Penderecki Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best-known works include '' Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', '' Polish Requiem'', '' ...

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

Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in p ...

: Stabat Mater (1985) * Knut Nystedt (1986) * Amaral Vieira (1988) * Trond Kverno (1991) * Pawel Lukaszewski (1994) * Vladimir Martynov (1994) * Salvador Brotons (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 Vladimír Godár (born 16 March 1956, in Bratislava) is a Slovak Contemporary classical music, classical and film score composer. He is also known for his collaboration with the Czech violinist, singer, and composer Iva Bittová. As an academic, ...

(2001) *

Bruno Coulais Bruno Coulais (born 13 January 1954) is a French composer, most widely known for his music on film soundtracks. Life and career Coulais was born in Paris; his father, Farth Coulais, is from Vendée, and his mother, Bernsy Coulais, was born in ...

(2005) *

Karl Jenkins Sir Karl William Pamp Jenkins, , Honorary Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, HonFLSW (born 17 February 1944) is a Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer. His best known works include the song "Adiemus (song), Adiemus" (1995, from the Adi ...

: Stabat Mater (2008) * Paul Mealor (2009, revised 2010) * Metropolitan

Hilarion Hilarion (291–371), also known by the bynames of Thavata, of Gaza, and in the Orthodox Church as the Great was a Christian anchorite who spent most of his life in the desert according to the example of Anthony the Great (c. 251–356). While ...

(2011) * Franco Simone (2014) * James MacMillan (2015) * Vache SharafyanStabat Mater for mezzo-soprano and male choir
(2017) Most settings are in Latin.

's setting is in Polish, although it may also be sung in Latin. George Oldroyd's setting is in Latin with an English translation for Anglican and Episcopalian use.

References

External links