Stabat Mater SATB + strings Orchestra

Hi again. I'm about finishing this new choral composition, but I would like as many suggestions, advices and criticisme as you want, before I finish it.

I've uploaded the "versi" from 1 to 10.

for .mp3 stabat mater 1-10.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

for .pdf Stabat Mater nos 1-10.pdf - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

thanks in advance.

Wow, very long piece! :O I think this is quite good work: I like it better than Ave Maria Stella, because the voices seem to blend better in this one, and yet it has an eerie, almost dark, feel to it :)

Ha ha. Thanks a lot. Well, classical text in "Stabat Mater" is also dark, about Mary's pain feeling. So that's because I've used Em. Well thanks again. I hope finish it early and correcting expressions and articulations mistakes too. (sorry for my bad english!!!)

Hi Vicent,

Music is interesting but I don't feel it always go well with the text.

Binding music with text is very hard to do well as the text gives real meaning to an abstract matter. Somewhere else Dev said 'ANYTHING is allowed' and that's true, nowadays there are no limits to what's allowed as all old rules and bonds have long been broken. The question is what goes well for the purpose and if you can justify it's use.

I don't like the parts where you use 3/8 or similar time signature. This are very short moments usually so I imagine you use it to expose part of the text, but if you read into the text it just doesn't make sense to me to draw attention to this particular word, or few words. You are not bound to any formal structure so in my opinion it would be wise to use the thoroughly understood text as a backbone of your composition.

Have a look at to baroque most popular Stabat Mater compositions:

Pergolesi and Vivaldi

They both use 3/8 but they change it along with the way the text is structured.

And to some extent they had to. In baroque era there were very rigid rules of composing.

Before Palestrina did it like

Later composer approached the text differently. I would recommend the following:

And here goes the most important think to remember: don't you ever let my comments discourage your writing. These are my opinion and you may or may not agree with them. I could just focus on what I like in your piece I suppose, but then it wouldn't help much.

- When voice are accompanied by instruments, they are usually placed above them in the score.

- There are collisions between markings in the score.

- Your choir enter marked forte, but you write three successive crescendi after this. The voices will be unable to sing much louder than the dynamic they enter at, so I would advise marking down the initial entry (the strings are piano anyway).

- Lyrics with several syllables need to have them hyphenated when sung over several notes.

- Indicate a dynamic marking at new entries. The previous one may still be in force but it is good practice to remind singers and players after any rest.

- Why the three blank pages at the end?

Otherwise not bad. The word-setting is good and the parts look fine in terms of range and finding notes, plus you have some fledgling counterpoint in the music which helps sustain the interest and momentum. I agree with the comment above that the music didn't always work to illustrate the text though; whilst you tempo and time changes provided contrast they didn't always seems to be particularly guided by the words.