Futrell: Stabat Mater (SACD)

Originally from Northern California, Tyler Futrell is a versatile composer from Oslo. His music attempts to synthesize almost contradictory historical branches, but his goal remains to write coherent music that combines intellectual interest and perceptual fascination. His influences include musique concrète instrumentale, sacred minimalism, late romanticism, spectral music, formalism, and contemporary choreography and theater. Tyler Futrell's Stabat Mater immerses us in the rich history of this religious text. Futrell preserves the melancholy beauty of the Stabat Mater settings of the last 600 years, exposing aspects that were previously hidden and incorporating the concept of glorification of suffering in general, alluding to Samuel Barber's Adagio. A modern interpretation of a sacred text and music that raises questions such as "Why so beautiful?" and "Can we bear this beauty?" Vuggesang - Norwegian for "lullaby" - is a meditative piece directly linked to a quote from the Stabat Mater. Brittle Fluid is also thematically and causally linked to the Stabat Mater. The title is reminiscent of a frozen waterfall, and the composer wanted to depict something that is both static and dynamic and in which death is also present, inspired by Tarjei Vesaas' novel The Ice Palace.