Kenneth Woods,
conductor
Antonin Dvorak- Stabat Mater, op. 8
Dvorak
began and completed his great setting of Jacoponne da Todi’s 14th century
poem Stabat Mater under a cloud of great personal
tragedy. In 1875 his oldest daughter Josefa died only
days after her birth. The grieving Dvorak turned to the Stabat Mater, seeing in its evocation of Mary’s grief at the death of her
son a portrait of parental love and pain that he related to on the most
personal level. He completed an outline of the entire work, but set it aside
before finishing its orchestration and the working out of details to work on
other pieces. Many scholars believe that the piece’s connection to Josefa made work on it too painful for Dvorak at the time.
However,
tragedy struck again with even greater cruelty only two years later. In August
of 1877 his second daughter Ruzena, then a toddler,
died when she drank from a bottle of phosphorus used to make matches. Only
weeks later Dvorak's three-year-old first-born son Otakar
died of smallpox. The now childless 36-year old composer returned to the Stabat Mater sketches and completed the work
within a month.
The
finished piece stands as one of the towering monuments of choral music. There
have been other great musical settings of da Todi’s poem, but Dvorak’s is by far the longest and most
serious, set in 10 movements for a large orchestra, chorus and four soloists.
Although conceived and written on a massive scale, Dvorak’s setting of the Stabat Mater seems to focus primarily on two
very personal aspects of the poem’s emotional world, those of grief and of
solace.
The
work begins with the orchestra alone playing undulating repetitions of the single
note f-sharp. Composers from the Renaissance on, including Bach,
had often used the sharp sign - #,
as a reference to the cross (in fact early texts called the sharp sign a
cross). Knowing this, one can’t help but see in this opening the stark vision of
the cross and Jesus in his final hours. The first moving notes heard are a
descending, chromatic line, played first in the violins then moving from
section to section. This lamenting theme may be an evocation of Mary’s falling
tears. The orchestra builds to a shattering climax, then fades and finally the
chorus sings. Dvorak sets the first line with only the tenors, perhaps here the
voice of the observer. The chorus develops the material set out by the
orchestra and builds to the same climax on the word “lacrimosa” or “tears.” Finally in the
middle section the four soloists join for what becomes a great dramatic scene.
The final section is a recapitulation of the opening followed by a stately,
hopeful coda.
The
first movement of the piece is by far the longest and most emotionally complex
in the work. Movements 2-9 each seem to meditate on one aspect of Mary’s grief,
the poet’s longing to give solace to her, or to share Jesus’ suffering. The
second movement is for the full quartet of soloists and Dvorak adds the mournful
english horn to emphasize an
atmosphere of lamentation. The third movement is a dirge-like march for the
chorus and orchestra. Some hear in its repeated C minor chords the trudging
steps of the march to the crucifixion. The fourth movement is a great operatic
scene for the bass soloist. This is Dvorak at his darkest and most tormented.
However, it is in this movement that Dvorak also gives us one of the most
stunningly sweet moments in all the work. On the words “Holy Mother” the
women’s voices intone a simple chorale melody that can’t help but be heard as
the voices of angels. The fifth movement, again for chorus and orchestra, is
built on a serenely flowing, infinitely simple melody, interrupted in the
middle by one of the few truly angry moments in the piece. Is this the music of
Dvorak the father, exhausted from comforting his ailing and grieving family,
finally releasing his pent-up anguish? In any case, the outburst is short-lived
and the movement concludes simply and peacefully.
The
sixth movement is a straightforward, almost lullaby-like melody sung
alternately by the tenor soloist and the men of the chorus. It is Dvorak at his
most direct, using the simplicity of folk-styled music to communicate on the
deepest of levels. The seventh movement is the only one to feature a great deal
of a cappella singing. The directness
and innocence of the choir’s music is contrasted with a great, arching and
longing melody in the strings. The eighth movement is a duet for soprano and
tenor of incredible tenderness and deep feeling- in the middle section we find
ourselves back at that stark sound of f-sharp. It as if Dvorak is forcing these
two voices of comfort to face the horror of the cross. Finally, the ninth
movement is a somber, march-like aria for the alto soloist, with reference made
to the marching theme of the third movement. Now the theme is treated in an
even more somber manner, with the pulsating rhythms replaced by a sobbing,
almost desperate lyricism.
Finally,
in the tenth movement Dvorak brings us to the end of this great meditation and
voyage. In it, all the grief and all the tenderness expressed in the previous
nine movements are surpassed in an embrace of the joy of transfiguration. The
movement opens as the piece opened, with the stark, eerily compelling f-sharps
in the orchestra. The four soloists then sing a lamenting restatement of the
music of the second movement, which evolves into a restatement of the main
themes of the very first movement. He has brought us full circle, back to where
we started, but now chorus and soloists sing “Let it be that the glory of
paradise is granted to my soul.” The massive crescendo first heard in the first
movement on the word “lacrimosa” is now repeated on the word “paradisi,” and at
the climax Dvorak arrives not on the anguished scream of the diminished chord
he used in the first movement, but on a radiant G major chord, with which the
work finally throws off the burden of grief once and for all. Freed at last of
anguish, the soloists, orchestra and chorus burst forth in the first and only
really fast music in the piece, a beautiful, almost ecstatic toccata on the
work “Amen.” The work ends with one last, majestic statement of the very first
theme of the piece,that
unmistakable descending melody, heard now in D major, the key used by Bach and
Beethoven to depict heaven in their own works. Instead of the opening words of
the poem (“The mother stood weeping, grief stricken”) we now hear only one
final “Amen.”
Copyright
2003 Kenneth Woods