– Composer: Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 — 23 July 1757)
– Performers: BBC Singers
– Accompaniment: Anthony Pleeth (Cello), Francis Baines (Double Bass), Timothy Farrell (Organ)
– Conductor: John Poole
– Year of recording: 1976
Stabat Mater, for double chorus & continuo in C minor, written in 1714.
00:00 – 01. Stabat Mater
02:44 – 02. Cujus animam gementem
06:56 – 03. Quis non posset
09:50 – 04. Eja Mater, fons amoris
11:58 – 05. Sancta mater, istud agas
15:20 – 06. Fac me vere tecum flere
16:25 – 07. Juxta crucem
18:43 – 08. Inflammatus et accensus
21:58 – 09. Fac ut animae donetur paradisi gloria
24:43 – 10. Amen
The period from 1714-1719, which Domenico Scarlatti spent in Rome employed by the Vatican as the maestro di cappella at St. Giulia, produced a considerable body of sacred and liturgical music, much of it worthy of further attention and performance. Foremost among these is his setting of the devotional Stabat Mater text. The work, completed in 1715, employs a choir of ten parts accompanied by organ and is rendered in a style that often seems archaic, but at moments introduces newer and powerfully expressive textures and harmonies. Despite the lush vocal sonority afforded by the large vocal forces, it is with local nuances and contours and subtle combinations of parts that Scarlatti engages the listener. At first glance, Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater seems like a misplaced work from the sixteenth century, with its gently arching melodic lines, delicate points of imitation, and elegant surface. Occasional harmonic clues betray the piece’s later date — a meditative plagal passage that frees itself of harmonic urgency, a cadence that points in an unforeseen direction. Despite the large ensemble, Scarlatti’s polyphonic fabric is pulled taught and polished, with only a hint of harmonic depth added by the organ; in passages where the vocal forces are most reduced, the clarity of phrase and declamation solidly place the work in the eighteenth century, despite its seemingly antiquated style.
One of this piece’s most compelling characteristics is the fluidity with which it connects the words and music. The devotional poem, cast in 10 stanzas of two tercets each, is not poured squarely into a corresponding series of musical passages, but rather stretched and molded into a larger and more organic form. The first four verses of the poem are bound together by a continuous musical passage and a recurring motive that is treated communally by the singers. The insistent rhetorical questions of the poem, “Quis est homo qui non fleret…Quis non posset contristari…?” (Who would not weep seeing the mother of Christ in such torment? Who would not feel compassion…?), are met first with an increasing musical urgency created by carefully wrought counterpoint, then a moment of pensive repose. In the subsequent passage, the music shifts from sheer declamation of words to expression of ideas and images, as shifting meters, variegated textures, and more angular writing enhance the poet’s description of Christ’s suffering. The adorations that follow, in which the poet affirms his devotion to Christ and desire to weep with Mary at the foot of the cross, eventually culminate in a masterfully crafted fugue on “Fac ut animae donetur paradisi gloria” (Grant that Paradise’s glory may be given to my soul) and a joyous chorus of “Amen.”