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<<  -- 4 --  Tess Crebbin    CHORAL MASTERPIECE

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The Stabat Mater, a thirteenth century devotional poem, is generally attributed to the Franciscan monk Jacopone da Todi (1228-1306) although some controversy persists over his authorship. It consists of ten verses at six lines each with 8-8-7-8-8-7 syllables per line. The rhyme scheme is AAB CCB and from verse five to the end the poem changes viewpoint from third into first person as it turns into a prayer to Mary, for her to reunite the writer with Christ. The first person prayer closes with the text 'when my body dies, grant that my soul be given the glory of paradise.'

The natural conclusion in setting such a poem to music would be to turn its ten verses into ten movements. Dvorák did nothing of the sort. Instead, he combined and divided the verses as he moves from grief to acceptance and, finally, to jubilation over the received grace of God. He retained the basic idea of ten movements but their length varies. Instead of allocating one movement to one verse, he used two full verses for the lengthy opening movement but then, there are times when he uses all of three lines to make up an entire movement (for example movements five and seven). Movements four to nine portray the prayer of the wayward Christian caught in his grief and hence the soloists feature prominently.

The Fac ut ardeat, part of the fourth movement, is a fine bass solo that mingles with the rest of the orchestra. It is an extremely difficult piece to sing and requires an exceptional performer, capable of capturing the intrinsic merit of soft-spoken grief while also strong enough to hold his own without being drowned out. Whenever the Stabat Mater is being performed, the search is on for a bass capable of coping with the intrinsic difficulties of the piece. One of these is the German Wagner and Verdi singer Harald Stamm, a Professor of Music who usually sings for the Hamburg National Opera and has kindly provided his insights on the work for an appendix to this article.

Dvorák's is the largest Stabat Mater imaginable and is full of repetitions of sentences or even entire stanzas, as though the composer were trying to make us focus not on the text and his composing skills, as is usually the case with a Stabat Mater, but to make us understand and re-feel his basic moods during his personal journey from grief to acceptance and, ultimately, to his unshaken faith.

The prominent chorus reflects the choral tradition of Dvorák's homeland but we also find in this compelling, intricate work the influence of Wagner that hits us head on in the opening movement. One must not forget that Dvorák actually met Wagner and played under him when the German, during a journey to Dvorák's Czech homeland, made use of the provisional theatre orchestra that Dvorák played in during that time. There is a series of bare intervals of rising octaves followed by a chromatic descent, reflecting, respectively, the image of Mary looking up to her son on the cross and then, the son looking down on his mother. Next, Dvorák does something unusual as though to hint at the unusual grief experience that he went through -- after all, most ordinary people would find it a great tragedy to be struck with the death of one child and only very few lose all three of their children within such a short time period. An unusual amount of grief warrants an unusual musical pendant: the descending chromatic scale climaxes neither on a major nor minor chord but on the most dissonant of tonal sonorities, a diminished chord, as though expressing the composer's feeling of being completely torn apart by his grief. In other words, following the descending chromatic notes, the music builds again with short ascending phrases and then comes a crushing diminished chord and this is a thinly veiled cry of despair. Then the opening chorus comes in, singing its first line, 'Stabat Mater Dolorosa'.

Other influences to be found in the Dvorák Stabat Mater are Brahms, of course, Italian Opera, but also the Baroque school. The entire piece is intensely symphonic in nature, showing this clearly to be the work of a classical orchestral composer. The impressive orchestral figures of the opening return for the final section once more. Every mood imaginable to man is reflected in the music of this Stabat Mater: there are beautiful duets, the baroque style Inflammatus et Accensus is reminiscent of Händel, the tenor aria Fac Me Vere Tecum with its imitating chorus response is clearly a statement of anguish and loss, the Alto's Inflammatus is driven by such urgency that it seems to reflect the personal destiny of the composer and the final movement with its highly emotional Quando Corpus Morietur ('when my body dies') affects to the core when it shifts from the predominant key of B minor to the Paradisi Gloria in D major, ending with ecstasy and acceptance of an all-wise God who seems to know exactly what he is doing even when we do not. Throughout the piece, there is an unmistakable Bohemian coloring but its dramatic individual design suggests that the composer was not so much counting on structure as he was on wishing to convey a sense of emotional unity and eventual serenity.

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Copyright © 1 May 2004 Tess Crebbin, Germany

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