Stabat Mater

A mother’s grief and mankind’s suffering supplied the particular and the universal themes of Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. He had been considering writing a “Peasant’s Requiem” when, by ill chance, his 13-year-old niece was killed in an accident. The Stabat Mater text, with its heartfelt expression of the pain experienced by the Virgin Mary as she witnessed her son Jesus’ crucifixion and death, resonated with the composer’s love for his grieving sister. Setting that text in Polish inspired him to create a strikingly original work in six movements for soprano, contralto and baritone soloists, mixed choir and orchestra, completed in 1926. Its initially austere melodic style, at times reminiscent of Gregorian chant, creates an atmosphere of foreboding that spills into despair. A funeral march sounds in the work’s second movement, “I Ktoz widzac tak cierpiaca” (“Quis est homo qui non fleret”), propelled by solo baritone and intensified by full choir, which in turn leads to the desolate duet for clarinet and contralto that opens “O Matko” (“Eia Mater”). Szymanowski here casts Mary as the universal mother, “fount of love”, and contemplates the meaning of her earthly suffering in the hymn-like unaccompanied chorus of “Spraw niech płaczę z tobą razem” (“Fac me tecum pie flere”). Stabat Mater ends with “Chrystus niech mi będzie grodem” (“Christe, cum sit hinc exire”—the Polish set by Szymanowski literally translates “Let Christ be my city”), crowned by a radiant soprano solo, described by the composer as “the most beautiful melody I have ever managed to write”.