Special Music for Easter: Dvorak's Stabat Mater - one of the most powerful declarations of faith in musical history.
Antonin Dvorak's Stabat Mater has to be one of the most beautiful and most moving pieces of music ever to come out of the Czech lands. The text is a devotional poem written in Latin in the 13th century, probably by the Franciscan monk Jacopone da Todi. It opens with the grief of the Virgin Mary at Christ's crucifixion, but then turns into a prayer, written in the first person and addressed to the Virgin - in which the writer longs to be reunited with Christ. The poem ends with the hope of the resurrection. The poetry is powerful in its very simplicity.
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