On this memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, two beautiful renditions of Jacopone de Todi’s 13th century poem, Stabat Mater, meditating on the sorrows of Mary ‘standing by the Cross’ (some say it was written by Innocent III). Whoever the author may be, the text is sublime, and music makes it more so.
The first is Antonio Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, an elegiac piece composed sometime before 1727, when it premiered.
And here is Giovanni Battista Piergolesi’s version of the same text, presented just a few years later, in 1736, in the last weeks of the composer’s life. A fitting way to enter eternity, and we may trust that Our Lady was pleased: