Good Friday

Holy Week was a busy time for the Steele's, as not only was hubby rehearsing/singing for every service and preparing his RCIA candidates to be fully received into the church, but I performed my senior recital on Good Friday. Carrie and I were extremely blessed to present G. B. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in conjunction with the Stations of the Cross Good Friday evening. It was a wonderful experience, not only for us to give the gift of beautiful, meditative music to the Ave Maria parishioners, but also for us, the musicians, to embark upon the way of the Cross singing the sentiments of the Sorrowful Mother. Below is a segment from my program notes:

The Stabat Mater Dolorosa is renowned as one of the greatest hymns originating from the Middle Ages. Recalling the prophet Simeon’s revelation to the Blessed Virgin, “and you yourself, a sword shall pierce,” (Luke 2:35), the words of this poem have been traced to St. Bonaventure and Pope Innocent III, but historians attribute its final compilation to Jacapone da Todi, a Franciscan friar of the 13th century. After its use in the Catholic liturgy was prescribed in 1727, it was implemented in the Divine Office and also as the sequence for the two feasts of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary which are celebrated on the Friday after Passion Sunday and on September 15, a second feast of the Sorrows promulgated by Pope Pius VII. Musical settings of the Stabat Mater were also incorporated into the devotion of the Stations of the Cross, with a verse being sung after each station was prayed, and the tradition continues to this day.

The maternal compassion and sorrow of the Blessed Mother are so well characterized in the Stabat Mater, that its poignant stanzas have inspired many composers to reflect the heart-rending emotions of Good Friday in musical settings. Among the famous composers who joined G. B. Pergolesi in doing so, are Boccherini, Haydn, Verdi, Rossini, and Dvorak. Reverend James Mearns in his Dictionary of Hymnology, aptly describes why the Stabat Mater is so compelling for all who hear it:

“This noble poem…has been, not unjustly, styled the most pathetic hymn of the Middle Ages. The vividness with which it pictures the weeping Mother at the Cross, its tenderness, its beauty of rhythm, its melodious double rhymes almost defying reproduction in another language, and its impressiveness when sung either to the fine plainsong melody or in the noble compositions which many of the great masters of music have set to it, go far to justify the place it holds, and has long held, in the Roman Catholic Church.”









Hair: Laura Dilanji
Photo Credits: Gary Huber