The Stabat Mater is a work composed by Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...

 in 1781 and revised in 1801.

Boccherini (1743-1805) was a musician best known for chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 (string quintets). His vocal work is played less often. He worked as a cantatrice and wrote numerous religious works (including one mass, two motets and two oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

s).

His Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Roman Catholic hymn to Mary. It has been variously attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi and to Innocent III...

 was a command passed in 1781  by the office of Las Arenas, his employer, the child Don Luis. The text is a text dating from the 13th century and attributed to Jacopone da Todi

Jacopone da Todi

Jacopone da Todi was a Franciscan friar from Umbria, Italy in the 13th century. He wrote several laudi in Italian. He was an early pioneer in Italian theatre, being one of the earliest scholars who dramatised gospel subjects.-Life:Jacopone studied law in Bologna and became a successful lawyer...

 which meditates on the suffering

Suffering

Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...

 of Mary during the crucifixion

Crucifixion

Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...

. The first version consisted of one soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 voice accompanied by a string quintet (two violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

s, one viola

Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

, two cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

s). It consists of 11 parts and lasts around three quarters of an hour. The musician rewrote it around twenty years later (in 1801) when he added an overture for two voices: a contralto

Contralto

Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

 and a tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

. The definitive work is known as opus 61 of the musician.

• Stabat mater dolorosa, Grave assai
• Cujus animam gementem, Allegro
• Quae moerebat et dolebat, Allegretto con moto
• Quid est homo, Adagio assai – Recitativo
• Pro peccatis suae gentis, Allegretto
• Eja mater, fons amoris, Larghetto non tanto
• Tui nati vulnerati, Allegro vivo
• Virgo virginum praeclara, Andantino
• Fac ut portem Christi mortem, Larghetto
• Fac me plagis vulnerari, Allegro commodo
• Quando corpus morietur, Andante lento

Discography

• Stabat Mater - Roberta Invernizzi
  Roberta Invernizzi
  Roberta Invernizzi is an Italian soprano. She originally studied piano and double bass before turning to singing. She specialises in early music from the baroque and classical period of music....
  
  , L'Archibudelli (2003, Sony SK 89 926)
• Stabat Mater - Agnès Melon (soprano), Ensemble 415, Dir. Chiara Banchini (1992, Harmonia Mundi HM 901378)

+ Stabat Mater - Isabel Rey

Isabel Rey

Isabel Rey is a Spanish operatic soprano who has performed leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and appears on many recordings.- Discography :*Handel: Semele – Conductor: William Christie; Rey, Bartoli, Workman...

(soprano) , JONDE , dir. Riccardo Frizza , DECCA