Stabat Mater where Mary saves Jesus performed with NZSO

The NZSO asked Auckland-based composer Victoria Kelly to pair Rossini’s version of the Stabat Mater with Ms Kelly’s setting of the text, in a choral work.

The Stabat Mater Dolorosa is considered one of the greatest Latin hymns of all time. It is based upon the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce the heart of Mary (Luke 2:35).

But when Ms Kelly read the English translation of the Latin, she found she could not, in good conscience, set it to music.

Ms Kelly said reading the words of the Stabat Mater left her with a deep sense of sadness – and rage.

Her rage was at the plight of a woman who makes a covenant with God which will see her own son tortured and murdered for the sake of humanity, and how that suffering has been a role model for women and mothers over two millennia, Radio New Zealand reported.

One option would have been to politely decline the commission, but Ms Kelly’s visceral response to the words also fired her creative spirit. So she decided to write her own words. Her version of the Stabat Mater sees Mary intervene to save Jesus.

Ms Kelly’s Stabat Mater had its world premiere – in a double bill with Rossini’s version – with the NZSO in Wellington last week.

In an address at Lourdes in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the suffering of Mary at the foot of the cross, but he also observed that this made her “capable of receiving the new spiritual mission that her Son entrusts to her immediately before ‘giving up his spirit’ . . . that of becoming the mother of Christ in his members. In that hour, through the figure of the beloved disciple, Jesus presents each of his disciples to his Mother when he says to her: Behold your Son”.

“Today Mary dwells in the joy and the glory of the Resurrection,” Benedict said.

“The tears shed at the foot of the Cross have been transformed into a smile which nothing can wipe away, even as her maternal compassion towards us remains unchanged. The intervention of the Virgin Mary in offering succour throughout history testifies to this, and does not cease to call forth, in the people of God, an unshakable confidence in her: the Memorare prayer expresses this sentiment very well.

“Mary loves each of her children, giving particular attention to those who, like her Son at the hour of his Passion, are prey to suffering; she loves them quite simply because they are her children, according to the will of Christ on the Cross.”

FULL STORY

Her own Stabat Mater (Radio New Zealand)

Stabat Mater dolorosa (Preces-Latinae)

Homily by Benedict XVI at Lourdes September 2008 (Benedict XVI)