Stabat Mater in F minor (Schubert)

Portrait of Franz Schubert by Franz Eybl (1827)

Stabat Mater in F minor, D 383, is a musical setting of the Stabat Mater sequence, composed by Franz Schubert in 1816.[1] It is scored for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, SATB choir, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 french horns, 3 trombones, violin I and II, viola, cello and double bass.

Rather than setting the Latin sequence of the Stabat Mater, Schubert used a German paraphrase by F. G. Klopstock, Jesus Christus schwebt am Kreuze.[2] The work is sometimes referred to as the Deutsches Stabat Mater, and was written for the composer's brother Ferdinand.[3]

Schubert had written a shorter setting of the Latin Stabat Mater in 1815, Stabat Mater in G minor, D 175, a single-movement piece of approximately six minutes' duration, using only four verses of the twenty stanzas of the sequence.[2]

  1. ^ Black, Leo (2003). Franz Schubert: Music and Belief. Boydell Press. p. 27. ISBN 9781843831358.
  2. ^ a b Newbould, Brian (1999). Schubert: The Music and the Man. University of California Press. p. 139. ISBN 9780520219571.
  3. ^ Howie, Crawford (2008). "Small is beautiful: Schubert's smaller sacred works". In Reul, Barbara M.; Bodley, Lorraine Byrne (eds.). The Unknown Schubert. Ashgate Publishing. p. 60. ISBN 9780754661924.