April 1st 2006

7:30pm, St Peter's Church, Acton Green, Southfield Road, Chiswick, London, W4

Verlieh uns Frieden	Mendelssohn
O vos omnes	Victoria
Wohl mir, dass Ich Jesum habe	J.S. Bach
Cantique de Jean Racine	Faure
O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht	J.S. Bach
Stabat Mater (world premier)	Alistair Jones

Louise Tucker – Mezzo Soprano

This new cantata, Stabat Mater, is based on an idea by Paul Davis. Following the successful pattern of Dies Irae (1990), Paul suggested a juxtaposition of the ancient Latin devotional poem describing Mary, the Mother of Christ, at the foot of the Cross, with poems by the Chilean poet, Ariel Dorfman. In his collection, "Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems", Dorfman takes as his subject mothers in Chile who, like Mary the Mother of Christ, suffer bereavement. Their sorrow is the loss of husbands and children taken by the Secret Police to be tortured and murdered. Dorfman's poetry is direct and emotionally charged and tells its tale in a powerful way.

Through the internet I was able to make contact with Dorfman and obtained his permission to use poems from this collection. I selected four pieces to be placed side by side with the Latin poem, the whole work dividing, with an introductory orchestral Prelude, into nine sections. A nice balance was achieved by dividing the Latin Stabat Mater into groups of four 3-line stanzas, each followed by a Dorfman poem. In the Finale, there is a fusion of texts; at significant moments the Latin creeps in underneath the Dorfman poems as accompaniment and comment, leading to a choral message of hope and calm with the Latin words of the final stanza.

The Latin Stabat Mater and the English Dorfman texts, needed a rich variety of orchestral colour and uses a small orchestra of solo wind instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone and bassoon), solo brass (horn, trumpet and trombone), with piano, harp, an extensive percussion section and the usual strings.

The Latin text is set for the chorus (8 parts) and the Dorfman poems for the Mezzo Soprano soloist. I have treated each of the Dorfman poems as an operatic scena, with the highly expressive and beautiful voice of Louise Tucker in mind.