|
Stabat Mater (Poulenc)
Stabat Mater, FP 148, is a musical setting of the Stabat Mater sequence composed by Francis Poulenc in 1950. BackgroundPoulenc wrote the piece in response to the death of his friend, artist Christian Bérard; he considered writing a Requiem for Bérard, but, after returning to the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour, he selected the medieval Stabat Mater text.[1] Poulenc's setting, scored for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra, premiered on the 13th of June 1951 at the Strasbourg Festival.[2][3] It was well received throughout Europe and in the United States where it won the New York Critic's Circle Award for Best Choral Work of the year.[4] StructureThe Stabat Mater is divided into twelve movements,[5] which vary dramatically in character from somber to light and frivolous, even on the most serious of texts. All the movements, though, are relatively brief; Robert Shaw's Telarc recording runs just under 30 minutes, with the longest movement taking just over four minutes.
The soprano soloist appears in only three movements: Vidit suum, Fac ut portem, and Quando corpus. The chorus appears largely a cappella in two others, O quam tristis and Fac ut ardeat, although the orchestra is not fully silent in either. Instrumentation
Recordings
References
Source texts
External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
