scholarly journals Sekwencja Stabat Mater we włoskich interpretacjach muzycznych doby XVIII wieku

Sympozjum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1 (40)) ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
Renata Borowiecka

The Stabat Mater sequence in Italian musical interpretations of the 18th-century The Stabat Mater poem, which describes the suffering of Blessed Virgin Mary under the cross on which Jesus – her Son – is dying, has become a universal theme which inspired composers of various ages and origins and found its expression in numerous musical interpretations. From among over 400 compositions which set the text of the sequence to music, a large proportion are 18th-century works (mostly – late baroque) of Italian provenience. Attempting to interpret a musical composition with text of the 18th century, one has to take into account the theory of affects and musical rhetoric, which make the text dependent on music both on the emotive and symbolic level. The paper will examine the Stabat Mater compositions in the rhetoric context, referring to three main levels: inventio, dispositio and decoratio. The common and individual tendencies will be articulated, evident by the appropriate choice of the key, tempo and rhetorical figures, as well as by some melodic and rhythmic motives or harmonic structure having function of the special illustrative-symbolic signs. The nodal points of the work will be presented as well as the requests of man directed at the Mother (the second part of the sequence) assuming varying intonations of supplication. The function and the message of the compositions are advisable. In contemporary times Stabat Mater of the great composers resound mainly as concert masterpieces in church and secular interiors. The vitality of these interpretations after three hundred years from their creation most certainly bears witness to the composers’ artistry in their works and proves their significance not only for the music of the 18th century but also for the culture and faith of today. Abstrakt Treść poematu Stabat Mater, opisującego postać Matki Bożej cierpiącej pod krzyżem, na którym umiera Jezus – Jej Syn, stała się jednym z uniwersalnych tematów sztuki, zainspirowała kompozytorów różnych wieków i ośrodków, co znalazło swój wyraz w bardzo licznych interpretacjach muzycznych. Spośród ponad 4000 kompozycji do tekstu sekwencji znaczna część to dzieła XVIII-wieczne (najczęściej późnobarokowe), pochodzące z kręgu włoskiego. Chcąc zinterpretować utwór słowno-muzyczny XVIII wieku, nie sposób czynić tego w oderwaniu od teorii afektów i retoryki muzycznej, które uzależniają tekst od muzyki zarówno na poziomie emotywnym, jak i symbolicznym. Referat stanowi próbę oglądu kompozycji Stabat Mater w kontekście retoryki na trzech odpowiadających jej poziomach: inventio, dispositio i decoratio. Wyartykułowane są tendencje wspólne oraz indywidualne, przejawiające się w odpowiednim doborze tonacji, tempa i figur retorycznych, a także pewnych motywów melodycznych, rytmicznych lub struktur harmonicznych funkcjonujących w roli znaku ilustracyjno-symbolicznego. Zaprezentowane zostają punkty węzłowe dzieł oraz prośby człowieka skierowane do Matki (druga część sekwencji) o różnorakiej intonacji błagalnej. Wskazana jest funkcja i przesłanie kompozycji. W czasach współczesnych Stabat Mater wielkich twórców rozbrzmiewają głównie jako dzieła koncertowe we wnętrzach kościelnych lub świeckich. Żywotność tych interpretacji 300 lat od ich powstania świadczy niewątpliwie o kompozytorskim kunszcie utworów oraz o ich znaczeniu nie tylko dla muzyki XVIII wieku, ale i dla dzisiejszej kultury i wiary.

Menotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Pister

The article discusses Johann Kuhnau’s fourth keyboard sonata, Der todtkranke und wieder gesunde Hiskias (The Mortally Ill and Then Restored Hezekiah), from his last volume of six keyboard sonatas published in Leipzig in 1700, known popularly as “Biblical Sonatas.” Titled as Musicalische Vorstellung einiger biblischer Historien (Musical Representation of Several Biblical Stories), the set presents a remarkably thorough and detailed musical depiction of selected scenes from the Old Testament. This is also a rare collection of keyboard music to provide a detailed narrative commentary, consisting of verbal synopses of selected stories in German, which preface each sonata, and commentaries in Italian written into notation, which underline portrayed situations, events and affections. To examine the plot-based narrative underlying the storyline of this particular sonata, some authentic discourses have been taken into consideration for analytical purposes. These included the composer’s foreword to the collection of his “Biblical Sonatas,” synopsis of the story depicted in the fourth sonata, and a comprehensive theory of musical rhetoric and the doctrine of the affections found in various 17th and 18th century sources. In this article, the author specifies distinct musical-rhetorical figures that resemble (by analogy) or refer to certain extra-musical objects or phenomena and serve as vehicles for creating different moods and establishing the atmosphere. Depending on which narrative element – action or affections – is brought into focus in each of the six sonatas, the author distinguishes between two types of sonatas, namely ‘action sonatas’ and ‘affective sonatas.’ Affections and shifts in mood experienced by Hezekiah make an important narrative element in the storyline of the fourth sonata. Hence this particular sonata falls under the category of ‘affective sonatas.’ The analysis of this sonata revealed that the narrative is constructed therein in several layers. Firstly, there is a verbal layer: to depict the story in detail and with much consistency, the composer thought it necessary to accompany notation with the synopsis of the story and verbal commentaries. Moreover, quotations from the Protestant chorale Ach Herr mich armen Sünder (Ah Lord, poor sinner that I am) imply verbal connotations of their verses. Secondly, it contains a musical-affective layer: musical devices (such as musical-rhetorical figures, key, rhythm, metre, and the like) are employed there to convey the indicated affections, such as wailing (lamento) or, in other words, sorrow, confidence (confidenza) and joy (allegrezza). The author observes that many compositional choices made by Kuhnau adhere to the standard methods of expressing affects as they were defined in the Baroque treatises. Thirdly, there is an associative layer: certain fragments and elements resemble (by analogy) and refer to extra-musical objects and/or phenomena, such as Belshazzar’s face turning pale and his limbs trembling in terror, the sesquialtera ratio (3:2), which symbolizes the numerical proportion of steps on Ahaz’s sundial and the years of Hezekiah’s life. The alternating musical textures, normally associated with sadness (adagio) and merriment (allegro), can be also mentioned as a characteristic narrative feature in this sonata. Although Kuhnau claimed to have depicted Biblical stories according to his own imagination, the analysis revealed that his writing in this sonata does not veer away from the typical musical vocabulary of the Baroque era, which nowadays requires a more sensitive ear and keener insight into compositional conventions of the period.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH KAUFFMAN

ABSTRACT An unusual type of orchestration sometimes called violons en basse is encountered in arias by French Baroque composers, including Couperin, Campra, and Rameau. In such pieces, the basse continue line is played by violins or violas notated in a high clef; the solo voice and any additional obbligato instruments remain in the treble register as well. This phenomenon has gone practically unnoticed by modern scholars and was seemingly unremarked upon by writers of the time, despite the striking color and lightness that it entails. A study of the texts of the arias in which violons are used en basse suggests that there are identifiable allegorical associations implicit in such pieces, and that they were clear to listeners of the time. Perhaps the most important and most frequent reference is to the pastoral, which is invoked by the texts and musical settings of a number of the airs. The pastoral can also be linked to the themes of peace and quiet delights present in other texts. Another important association shared with the pastoral is innocence, which is often conjoined with the idea of youth; youth is directly referred to in some texts, and also through several personages who sing them, such as Cupid (a boy), Diana (depicted in mythology as eternally young), and Hebe (the personification of youth). By identifying the allegorical use of violons en basse, we are able to add another texture and sonority to the common musical language of topics that was central to 18th-century musical rhetoric.


2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-209
Author(s):  
M. Gregory Kirkus

The common ground trodden by Father John Morris of the Society of Jesus and members of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary was at first a shared interest in the acts of the English martyrs. This widened to a study of the history of the Institute and Father Morris’s involvement in its current problems—the removal of the Church’s three-century old ban, the vexed question of Mary Ward’s title of foundress, the desirability of union of all the members, and the drawing up of the constitutions acceptable to all. These intellectual explorations and their practical application led him to the Bar Convent in York, to Haverstock Hill and Ascot in the south, and to Nymphenburg, Altötting and Augsburg in Germany.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4 Zeszyt specjalny) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Andrzej Witko

The life motto of Karol Wojtyła – of the Pope St John Paul II – was contained in two words: Totus Tuus. They were derived from the work dating back to the 18th century and published in 1843: Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary by St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort. The choice of such a life’s motto was expressing the total and limitless offering of the exceptional follower to the Mother of God, also being an expression of his living, concrete, overwhelming and all-encompassing faith. This very motto has inspired Izabela Delekta-Wicińska, a Cracovian artist, to paint – in the year 1984 – a unique picture Totus Tuus, which gained enormous popularity in the whole world, thus becoming an object of fraud in respect of piety. Even though the artist held that she was inspired by an exceptional embrace of John Paul II and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński on the day of inauguration of the pontifi of the Polish Pope, a photograph of the Totus Tuus painting was circulated in the entire Christian world as a miraculous picture of Pope John Paul II that was taken accidentally. In the early 1990s one of the then most pre-eminent mariologists, Rev. René Laurentin, was interested in the matter. Even as late as in the 2018 the www.infovaticana.com website explained that the Totus Tuus depiction is not a miraculous photography of the St. John Paul II but a painterly vision of the Cracovian artist, Izabela Delekta-Wicińska.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-185
Author(s):  
Edyta Sokalska

The reception of common law in the United States was stimulated by a very popular and influential treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone, published in the late 18th century. The work of Blackstone strengthened the continued reception of the common law from the American colonies into the constituent states. Because of the large measure of sovereignty of the states, common law had not exactly developed in the same way in every state. Despite the fact that a single common law was originally exported from England to America, a great variety of factors had led to the development of different common law rules in different states. Albert W. Alschuler from University of Chicago Law School is one of the contemporary American professors of law. The part of his works can be assumed as academic historical-legal narrations, especially those concerning Blackstone: Rediscovering Blackstone and Sir William Blackstone and the Shaping of American Law. Alschuler argues that Blackstone’s Commentaries inspired the evolution of American and British law. He introduces not only the profile of William Blackstone, but also examines to which extent the concepts of Blackstone have become the basis for the development of the American legal thought.


Author(s):  
Mariia Helytovych

The article contains an analysis of the iconostasis of the Assumption of Mary Church located in the vil. Nakonechne (Yavoriv district, Lviv region), which represents the most fully preserved iconostasis ensemble of the XVI century. For the first time, its reconstruction was completed taking into account all saved icons. The article deals with stylistic, iconographic and artistic features of this ensemble, as well as its connection with other iconostases of that time. More precisely, the dating of the monument is argued. In the article, the author suggests to consider an ensemble from Nakonechne as a phenomenon in the history of Ukrainian icon painting, which reflected the most characteristic tendencies that took place in the painting of the second half of the XVI century. The author traces his influence on the iconography of the end of the XVI – the beginning of the XVII century


Archaeologia ◽  
1890 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.H. St. John Hope

At the west end of the great abbey church of SS. Peter and Paul at Glastonbury are the ruins of a chapel of very remarkable character.It was built on the site of a vetusta ecclesia dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of very great antiquity, which was consumed by fire, together with the great church and nearly all the abbey buildings, in 1184.As the vetusta ecclesia, from its sanctity and the number of relics it contained, was a holy place much resorted to by pilgrims, its reconstruction was forthwith commenced, and carried out with such speed that “about 1186” it was ready for consecration by Reginald, bishop of Bath.


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