Mai Oizumi

Both Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina (ca. 1525-94) and Orlando di Lassus (1532-94) composes the Stabat Mater for two choirs. However, each arrives at very different musical pieces according to their interpretations of the text. Palestrina's music encompasses a spiritual quality, and he clearly represents the ideals of the Counter-Reformation. His music is very controlled, structured, serene, balanced, and continuous, with clearly understandable presentation of the text. Lassus, unlike Palestrina who is more concerned of the whole interpretation or structure of the text, writes a more passionate music that closely reflects on the meaning of the words. Words are important to Lassus, and he therefore makes the music closely follow the text appropriately. Where Palestrina mostly writes for sacred music, Lassus composes for other secular genre as well. One may perhaps claim Palestrina's style to be much more conservative than Lassus's; however, Palestrina also has his subtle but effective ways of conveying his own interpretation of the text in his music as well. It is very ironic how the Stabat Mater is discarded from the Church repertoire after the Council of Trent's decisions; and yet, the controversial Song of Songs, which Palestrina composes containing many allusions to physical love and other lascivious natures, is accepted by the Church and is preserved. Nonetheless, Stabat Mater is also a passionate text which could potentially invoke a certain over-powering emotional response, which the Church is strongly against.

The two composers use two choirs to sing in Stabat Mater. Lassus goes about dividing the entire piece into 10 stanzas, where one choir sings a stanza and the other choir sings the next, and pauses after each stanza. One can hear the difference in the two choirs, since the first choir consists of all the high voices: the soprano I and II, alto I, and tenor I; and the second choir contains the lower: alto II, tenor I and II, and the bass. The listener can easily hear the trade-off between the high and low stanzas. Perhaps in this way, Lassus tries to distinguish the importance of the separation between each stanzas: each stanza holds an important message that is different from the one before. Such a systematic structure is then resolved in the last, tenth stanza, by combining the two choirs. For the first time, all the parts are singing at once, and one can hear the echoing of the important words between the first and the second choir. Lassus concludes the piece in a grand, striking, highly-pleasing, important manner.

Palestrina, however, does not systematically set the text in this way. His divisions of the text and choirs involves more of an interpretation of the whole piece. There are only few breaks heard throughout Palestrina's Stabat Mater, the major ones being right before and after the fifth stanza "Eja Mater, fons amoris... complaceam". Every time there is this long break, noted in the score by a fermata, the text begins with "...Mater". Perhaps he wishes to emphasize The Mother, since this piece is about her. The reader can understand the structure of the text more easily in Palestrina's divisions. In the first section (stanzas 1~4), the narrative text talks about the suffering of the Mother due to her son's death; the second part (stanza 5) is the personal response towards the Mother's pain; and the final part (stanza 6~10) has many stanzas begin with "grant that...", with the prayers one has for oneself and the Holy One. Furthermore, Palestrina distributes the two choirs according to the sequences heard through the poetic meter. Unlike Lassus's division of voice parts, in Palestrina's choirs, each choir possess a soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Therefore, it is not so easy to hear the differences in the two choirs: there is more blend and unity, and therefore, a continuation throughout the piece. One choir would sing one line, and the other choir, the next, without hearing much of a difference in the two lines. Many times, at important lines or at cadences, Palestrina combines the two choirs to provide more emphasis. For instance, in stanza 2, we hear two choirs separately singing in turns, and then at the cadence, we hear "Nati poenas inclyti"(the sufferings of her glorious Son!) with both choirs. At the very end of Stabat Mater also, he composes "Confoveri gratia" (strengthened by Grace) with such powerfulness displayed by the two choirs. Even right after this, Palestrina goes back to separate choir parts, but then ends on the "Paradisi gloria" with the whole choir. It seems as if he is trying to create a flow, first going upwards to the striking "Confoveri gratia", then to a simpler "Quando corpus... donetur", and finally ending in a blissful, almost angelic "Paradisi gloria", where we hear "gloria" repeated quietly only in the tenor. Palestrina and Lassus uses completely different techniques for the structure of Stabat Mater.

In more specific instances, with Lassus, we can identify many places where he illustrates the importance of the text by his close musical interpretations. From the first line of the Stabat Mater, he already tries to emphasize the sorrowful Mother by landing on "dolorosa" with a painful dissonance. Similarly, again in the first stanza, he uses dissonance to portray the lamentfulness on "cujus animam gementem". One could also literally hear a deep trembling, fearful sound in the second stanza, at "Et tremebat". Lassus uses dissonance in order to attach an appropriate feeling of the text. Lassus also literally interprets the words and applies music accordingly. In stanza 9, the text states "to be freely joined with you in lamentation, I desire" ("Te libenter... desidero"), and the music starts out with a couple of high, lonely voices, and is then literally "joined" by the rest of the voices in the latter half. Lassus tries to show us musically what he understands of the text. Furthermore, Lassus emphasizes important words by repeating it many times in the music: either by one voice singing the words more than once, or by having the two choir echo the words. Such an instance is seen at "Sancta Mater". To further show the importance and seriousness of this name, he applies a fearful sounding harmony with lots of low notes. In Palestrina's piece, however, he does not necessarily emphasize on each of the words. His "Sancta Mater" is not so noticeably different from the other parts of music in his piece, except that the full choir is singing it simultaneously. The example at "Stabat Mater dolorosa" sounds just like any part of the melody, compared to what Lassus does in his piece. Instead of emphasizing on specific words, Palestrina seems to concentrate on making the music more fluid and continuous as he possibly can.

One way Palestrina tries to make the music more continuous is by closely following the poetic meter of the text itself. Stabat Mater is a sequential text, where many of the lines have the same number of syllables and similar rhyme schemes, especially at the ends of the lines. Palestrina is very careful at trying to follow the proper accentuation of each words. If one were to simply speak the text, the musical rhythm would try to comply with the speaking rhythm. In many places throughout the piece, he has choirs singing in unison with the same rhythm. One example is in stanza 3: "Quis non... contemplari"; another could be seen in stanza 9: "Inflammatus... defensus". Interestingly in Lassus's piece at this point, for the first time he also uses unison voices with the same rhythm according to the text. However, his rhythm here is the evenly sounding "taah-ta-taah-ta / taah-ta-taah-ta"; whereas Palestrina writes "ta-ta-taah-ta / ta-ta-taah-ta". When speaking "Inflammatus et accensus", one would normally speak like that of Palestrina's rhythm. Palestrina is very particular to his accompanying his music to the specific rhythm of the words, with the correct accent marks.

One could perhaps say that this "Inflammatus... defensus" ("Fired and excited by you, O Virgin, let me be defended on the Day of Judgment") is very important for Lassus since throughout his piece, it is here where we hear the only very noticeable change in rhythm which is also sung in unison. Perhaps he tries to set the next, very last stanza of the piece, by making us pay attention to the music more. The systematic trade-offs between the two choirs at every stanza could lead one to a passive state of listening, and so Lassus may be trying to wake us up in the latter part of stanza 9, tuning us into the words again by providing a shift in the music. After this shift, he arrives at the very last stanza, where both choirs sing in turns, echoing segments of smaller passages: "Quando corpus... gloria". One can easily notice the emphasis he places with the repetition of the words between the two choirs. It sounds as if one is repeating back the words of a prayer. He then brings the two choirs together to sing simultaneously at "Paradisi gloria". Here, he tries to imitate the sensation of rising towards heaven, or paradise, by leading all the notes for all the parts rise upwards, finally landing on a high d. The added "Amen" further leads one to think of this last section as a prayer - perhaps the most important section of the entire piece.

Palestrina, however, as stated above, does not conclude the Stabat Mater in the attention-grabbing way that Lassus does. However, one may see a similar technique to that of Lassus's ending, in the latter half of stanza 4 in Palestrina's piece. This is the last stanza in his first grouping, and he then pauses for a while after this cadence. Like Lassus's choirs trading off after each word in stanza 10, Palestrina also makes both of the choirs sing the same segments, but not simultaneously: one sings "Dum emisit", the other echoes it (in Lassus, one choir sings "Quando corpus" and the other echoes it). It only lasts shortly, but this echoing effect is seen in Palestrina at the important ending of the first section. Normally Palestrina trades the choirs off after a completion of a thought. Instead, like the ending of Lassus's piece, he tries to emphasize the pain of the Mother watching her Son "dying forsaken". Finally, he comes to the end of the sentence and brings the two choir together, singing "spiritum" simultaneously (as Lassus had "gloria, Amen" sung simultaneously also). <Palestrina's example ("Vidit suum... spiritum); Lassus's ending ("Quando corpus... gloria)>. However, there is an important difference in Palestrina's example versus Lassus's: when repeating the same words/phrases, Palestrina makes the two choirs overlap so that there still is a continual flow in the music. Lassus, on the other hand, separates the repetitions so that the listener can hear clearly, what is said two distinct times in a row. Palestrina is very subtle in abiding by his custom to make music as continual as possible, and yet is able to make an emphasis on parts he interprets as being meaningful and important.

Even though Palestrina and Lassus both compose the Stabat Mater, there is a big difference between their music. Palestrina specifically uses his own techniques in addressing the text, interpreting it as he himself would read it. He sets the whole text into 3 different sections according to the different themes. Further, his music style is displayed clearly in his composition. In The New Grover Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he is claimed as such: "compared with the highly contrasting and vividly dramatic style of Lassus, Palestrina's motets convey an emphasis on the gradual unfolding of motivic segments that are broadly similar to one another and thus provide a strong sense of organic unity"(Grove,126). He "scrupulously respected the syntax and accent patterns of the texts he set,"(Brown, 292) and "[in order] to ensure that the stream of counterpoint remained even and uninterrupted, he controlled his dissonances rigorously and invented melodies that introduce neither abrupt or disturbing leaps nor sudden changes of direction or pace"(285). Throughout this essay, we see these points to be very true of Palestrina. On the other hand, there is Lassus, whose "thematic originality is blended with a contrapunctal fluidity that in less distinguished pieces approaches formula; there is plenty of chordal declamation, always marked by strength and clarity of harmony; expressive word-painting abounds but does not dominate or upset the equilibrium of a piece; and a certain succinctness... is noticeable"(Grove, 485). He further "[molds] the music according to the shape and meaning of the text"(Brown, 300). Lassus's piece is more expressive, and has less simultaneous movement, (such is more noticeable in Palestrina's piece) but this does not "upset the equilibrium" at all. Both are not as expressive and lively as the music of Janequin or Monteverdi; Lassus and Palestrina write a slower, more comprehensive music, which the Church would approve of. However, ironically, this piece does not pass the standards of the Church, and is discarded from the repertoire. Those with more questionable text like Palestrina's "Song of Songs" are instead allowed to still be part of the Church repertoire.