Domenico Scarlatti: Stabat Mater, A workshop for singers (and NWEMF Annual General Meeting)
VOICES
Tutor: John Hancorn
Location: Didsbury Baptist Church, Manchester
Reviewer: Hugh Cherry
13th century words, 18th century music, 21st century workshop – Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater, 10th May with John Hancorn
Just fewer than 30 singers assembled in Manchester on 10th May for a workshop on Stabat Mater by Domenico Scarlatti. This composition for 10 voices plus continuo was published in 1715 when Scarlatti was working in Rome (so he was only 30 years old and most of his keyboard sonatas for which he is justly famous, lay ahead of him). It is unique within his known compositions in its scale and complexity. The 10 voices (4 sopranos and 2 each of the other parts) function as equals, rather than splitting into 2 or more defined choirs, although on occasions some parts (particularly the sopranos) do double each other.
The original Stabat Mater poem is a reflection on the grief of Mary, the Mother of Jesus as she stands by the Cross. The music reflects this with striking variety, much of it employing classic suspensions and dissonances to stretch the harmony to breaking point, but some parts are calm and reflective, and towards the end, dramatic and theatrical. John Hancorn, our workshop leader told us we could all be soloists. “There is nothing polite about this music, it is full of Italian intensity, but you must avoid any temptations to become like 19th century Italian opera. Focus on he words of the poem.” At the same time we had to “Connect with the vertical” – be very aware how the parts push against each other as suspended notes find other parts moving against them, sometimes to excruciating effect (“The elastic band of dissonance”). With such a complex piece where not infrequently all 10 parts were moving against each other, the ability to connect with the other singers was essential. John had us standing in a circle for some of the day, including the final performance, and this much improved our ability to work together.
The music’s style, with a historical context firmly in the centre of the baroque period, looks both backwards and forwards. Much of the more tormented music recalled renaissance polyphony in the powerful and controlled use of dissonance, but the final sections, where the sopranos and tenors had quite virtuosic runs, were pure baroque and recalled the Amen chorus from Handel’s Messiah. In other places, John even pointed out possible foreshadowings of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte and The Magic Flute. So the work required a constant awareness of the style of the particular section – for instance, the advice to sing through the dotted notes in the ‘renaissance-like’ sections was reversed in the baroque parts where a much more spiky and detached style was needed to avoid the texture becoming muddy and confused (“There is no resting place in this piece”).
We were fortunate to have four assets for this workshop. Firstly, a clearly very experienced workshop leader who knew the work backwards, loved it, and had performed and tutored it many times. Second we were fortunate to have roughly the size of choir that Scarlatti would have expected, 2-3 to a part, who, although not in any way of professional standard, had enough capable sight readers that note-bashing did not figure strongly and we were able to concentrate on musical effect. Thirdly Didsbury Baptist Church was a very spacious and comfortable venue in which to sing, and we were even supplied with coffee and biscuits. Last, but by no means least, the Stabat Mater itself, a wonderful and dramatic piece which stretched both our technical and musical resources to the limit, and which, at least for me, much increased my admiration for Domenico Scarlatti who I had previously pigeon-holed with his 550 keyboard sonatas.
We were all delighted to have worked our way right through the piece by 2:30 in the afternoon, leaving time enough to go back over the rougher parts before the closing run-through, which gave us a view of the entire piece, perhaps with the odd blemish, but still quite overwhelming in effect.
A week before the workshop, NWEMF was considering cancelling it as only about 12 people had applied, luckily there was a last minute flood before the deadline and we ended with the group of nearly 30 which worked very well. But for people looking at NWEMF’s future workshops, remember that they only run if enough people apply before the deadline. We nearly missed this one, and that would have been a great shame.
Hugh Cherry
First published in June 2014 Newsletter
