Stabat Mater Zbigniewa Bujarskiego w kontekście tradycji gatunku

The Christian religion, since the beginning of its times focuses on contemplating the circum-stances of Christ’s death. The scene of Mater dolorosa found its literary expression in the words of a medieval poem Stabat Mater dolorosa. The text became part of the Church liturgy as a sequence and hymn and distinctly entered the music art world. Through compositions, the authors passed on both the creed of Christian faith as well as personal experiences related with the search for the purpose of life and death in the face of a tragic situation. Bujarski’s Stabat Mater was composed following an “external inspiration” (a commission), but it was preceded by a profound “internal inspiration”. The author wrote the composition to the Polish philological translation of the sequence, because he wanted his work to be a very personal statement as close as possible to his deepest feelings. In Stabat Mater, the composer refers to an oratorio and cantata genre creating a choir and orchestra composition. The relations between choir and orchestra set in the history of interpretations are reversed in Bujarski’s composition, i.e. instru-mental music seems to be in the foreground, and the vocal parts only bring further clarification of semantic contents. The author captured the scene with Mater Dolorosa as if in the frames of a paint-ing: within one cohesive whole he provided the course of his work with a three-part layout with re-prise features. Listening closely to Stabat Mater it is impossible not to get the impression that music carries with it quasi-painting features, playing out between the darkness of the Golgotha’s drama and the light of hope coming from the Resurrected Jesus. Colour (an essential feature of Bujarski’s music) and space-time are often shaped in contrast with each other, as if in a chiaro-scuro effect. Bujarski in his “end-of-the-century” work expressed the entire complexity of time in which he lives (fear, tragedy), but he also confirmed his Christian attitude which he represented from the very beginning of his creative path (he pointed to hope and love). Stabat Mater constitutes also a fervent prayer full of humility and trust. It seems as well that in Stabat Mater, through the tragedy of God-man crucified for man’s misdeeds, Bujarski expressed a man of his generation. By referring to the great sacral tradition and through a highly individual musical interpretation, the composer once again discovered “veiled and lost values” and set out the right path for man, leading towards hope, towards the highest Truth.