High Life

HIGH LIFE 101 Extant in both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, Marian hymns are Christian songs dedicated to Mary, Mother of God, often used in devotional and liturgical services. Alongside Ave Maria, Ave Maris Stella, Magnificat, Regina Cœli and Salve Regina, Stabat Mater is one of the most prominent Marian hymns, and probably the most poignant, depicting Virgin Mary’s indescribable suffering as Jesus Christ’s mother during his crucifixion. The text was written in the 13th century by either the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi or Pontifex Maximus Innocent III. The title is adopted fromthe first line of the hymn, stabat mater dolorosa, literally “there stands the sorrowful mother”. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is filled with complex polyphony, emotional intensity and dramatic effects, so much so that it was admired by even the puritanical firebrand Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but did not escape the satire of the patriarch of the Bach dynasty, the Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach, who adapted it for a non-Marian text in German in his celebrated cantata Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083. From the 16th century onwards, Stabat Mater was set to music by numerous composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Antonio Vivaldi, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt and Giuseppe Verdi, all the way to Arvo Pärt in 1985.