By Daniel Buckwalter
This was an enchanting afternoon, inside a mausoleum.
That’s not said often, to be sure, but the season finale for this year’s Music to Die For series was all of that and more when the Oregon Bach Collegium wonderfully performed “Stabat Mater” on Oct. 11 in front of an overflowing audience that filled and then spilled out the doors onto the lawn of the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery’s Hope Abbey Mausoleum at 25th Avenue and University Street.
“Stabat Mater” (Latin for “The mother was standing”) is a moving poem believed to have been written in the 13th century. It is part sacred storytelling about the agony the Virgin Mary felt at the foot of the cross as she watched her son Jesus die and part a devotional plea — a prayer — for love, empathy and repentance, and traditionally sung or prayed during Lent, on Good Friday.
The author of the poem is unknown, but music for it has been written by many composers. The Collegium chose the composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s version, perhaps the best-known musical arrangement of the poem.
Musicians for this performance included violinists Holly Roberts and Jay Sedloff, violist Hannah LaGassey, cellist Titus Young and harpsichordist Tung Nguyen.
It is, of course, the vocalists who lovingly take the audience from the excruciating pain of the Virgin Mary (“The grieving Mother stood weeping / beside the cross where her Son was hanging”) to the elegance that is the prayer of repentance in the second half (“Let me be shielded by the cross, / protected by Christ’s death / cherished by grace”).
For this, there was soprano Paige Marie Cook and alto Alyse Jamieson. They were magnificent, giving the Sunday afternoon performance the grace and refinement it deserved.
May we all find threads of grace and refinement in our own lives.
The next free performance of the Oregon Bach Collegium — The Celtic Baroque — will take plce at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22, at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1390 Pearl St.
