dolorosa by mauro diciocia
dolorosa
mauro diciocia
stereo 2.0
3h45m49s
2023
On the night of Good Friday 2023, I decided to subject the first movement of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater (Duet. Grave: Stabat Mater Dolorosa, Deutsche Grammophon version, 1985) to an extreme process of elongation. This involved a gradual slowing down, divided into dozens of downpitching and filtering stages, which resulted in a delicate sound texture lasting nearly four hours in where digital artifacts - including distortions, phase variations, DC offset, and more - move in a gentle counterpoint.
In Catholic liturgy, the Stabat Mater is a prayer, or rather a sequence, traditionally attributed to Jacopone da Todi, that depicts the sufferings of Mary, the mother of Jesus, during the crucifixion and the Passion of Christ. From the Middle Ages until the 20th century, many composers have set it to music, but Pergolesi's version is by far the most poignant, reworked - or rather literally plagiarized - even by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Usually, this composition accompanies the Mass and rituals of Good Friday, but the first public diffusion of 'dolorosa' occurred on Easter Sunday through Fango Radio (IT), looping for 24 hours. This broadcast was an invitation to reflect extensively on the concept of sorrow and its relationship with our multilayered algophobia, even during the day of Resurrection.
On the night of August the 29th 2023 the piece was broadcasted for the second time from the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, in the frame of RADIOPHRENIA - the light at the end of the dial.
Tracklist
| 1. | dolorosa (excerpt I) | 13:20 |
| 2. | dolorosa (excerpt II) | 14:24 |
