Page 230 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

James MacMillan has undertaken this musical pilgrimage several times: a pair of
Passions (St. John and St. Luke); multiple Masses; a richly expressive “Seven Last
Words from the Cross” and the Stations of the Cross-based piano trio “Fourteen
Little Pictures.” But his “Stabat Mater,” written in 2015 and having its American
premiere on Thursday at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, offered him
something new.

“I’m quite interested in finding new ways of retreading or telling the same story over
and over again in different ways,” Mr. MacMillan, 60, said in a recent interview. “The
‘Stabat Mater’ allows a different flavor, a different perspective. To see the Passion
story through Mary’s eyes, as it were, even before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
was fascinating.”

That perspective is one of pathos sustained through 20 stanzas of Latin verse. Mr.
MacMillan divides the text into four large movements, each exploring a different
shade of grief. The first movement asks, “What person would not weep seeing the
Mother of Christ in such agony?” at first gently with a mournful, melismatic soprano
solo — then aggressively, with collective shouting. Such contrasts arise throughout:
archaic choral polyphony and modernist whisperings, keening string clusters and
plaintive drones.

The music, for chamber choir and string ensemble, “is visceral in its energy,” said
Harry Christophers, who will conduct the Lincoln Center performance by The
Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia.

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