On this eve of Passion Sunday and Holy Week, and to complement our reflection on Our Lady’s role in redemption, we will re-post these two Marian and Lenten musical offerings:
The first is Antonio Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, an elegiac piece composed sometime before 1727, when it premiered. The text is based on the 13th century poem and hymn on the sorrows of Mary ‘standing by the Cross’, written either by Jacopone de Todi, or Pope Innocent III:
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: