Stabat Mater　Word for word translation TranslationTIS
(For your info Rossini Stabat Mater HP with slightly different words)　
MIDI Stabat Mater Dolorosa.　Eia Mater,fonsa moris　
Mp3:My favorite parts Eia Mater,fonsa moris,Fac ut adeat,TenorSolo:Fac me vere tecum flere
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Sample(Literal translation plus some memos）

Dvorak was born in Nelahozeves near Prague (today the Czech Republic) where he spent most of his life. He studied music in Prague's only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and slowly developed himself as an accomplished violinist and violist. Throughout the 1860s he played viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which was from 1866 conducted by Bedrich Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvorak with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up the orchestra in order to compose. He fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, Cypress Trees, expressing his anguish at her marriage to another man. However, he soon overcame his despondency and in 1873 married her sister, Anna Cermakova.

In 1891 he wrote his requiem mass, a work which shows much of the tonal colour and simplicity of his mature work.

From 1892 to 1895, Dvorak was the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The Conservatory was founded by a wealthy socialite, Jeannette Thurber, who wanted a well-known composer as director in order to lend prestige to her institution. She wrote to Dvorak, asking him to accept the position, and he agreed, providing that she were willing to meet his conditions: that talented Native American and African American students, who could not afford the tuition, must be admitted for free-an early example of need-based financial aid. She agreed to his conditions, and he sailed to America.

It was during this time as director of the Conservatory that Dvorak formed a friendship with Harry Burleigh, who became an important African-American composer. Dvorak taught Burleigh composition, and in return, Burleigh spent hours on end singing traditional American Spirituals to Dvorak. Burleigh went on to compose settings of these Spirituals which compare favorably with European classical composition.

In the winter and spring of 1893, while in New York, he wrote his most popular work, the Symphony No.9 "From the New World". Following an invitation from his family, he spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech speaking community of Spillville, Iowa. While there he composed two of his most famous chamber works, the Quartet in F ("The American"), and the String Quintet in E flat.

Also while in the United States he heard a performance of a cello concerto by the composer Victor Herbert. He was so excited by the possibilities of the cello and orchestra combination displayed in this concerto that he wrote a cello concerto of his own, the Cello Concerto in B minor (1895). Since then the concerto, considered one of the greatest of the genre, has grown in popularity and frequently performed today. He also left an unfinished work, the Cello Concerto in A major (1865), which was completed and orchestrated by the German composer Gunter Raphael between 1925 and 1929 and by Jarmil Burghauser in 1952.

Dvorak had a colorful personality. In addition to music, there were two particular passions in his life: locomotive engines, and the breeding of pigeons.

He eventually returned to Prague where he was director of the conservatory from 1901 until his death in 1904. At the end of his life, Dvorak was in serious financial straits, as he had sold his many compositions for so little he had hardly anything to live on. He is interred in the Vysehrad cemetery in Prague
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

Stabat Mater
The hymn was used extensively in the Church liturgy by the end of the fourteenth century.  Georgius Stella, Chancellor of Genoa (d. 1420), in his "Annales Genuenses", speaks of its by group known as the Flagellants in 1388.  In 1399 record of its use has been found in Provence, France.  Its companion poem, the Stabat Mater Speciosa, has never become a part of Church liturgy.  Authorship of that text has never been successfully determined but arrived at about the same time. 

Many scholars attribute the Dolorosa text to the 12th century poet Jacopone da Todi, although some dispute exists over that ascription.  The text was found in European (but not English) Missals of the fifteenth century.  In 1717, the Roman Catholic Church introduced the text into the Roman Breviary and Missal at the Feast of the Seven Sorrows, part of the then Good Friday celebration.

 Along with Todi, the poem has also been ascribed to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Pope Innocent III (d 1216), St. Bonaventure (d. 1274), Pope John XXII (d. 1334), Pope Gregory XI (d. 1378).  Of these ascriptions, scholars believe that the only probable ones  are Todi and Innocent III.  St. Thomas Aquinas bolsters Todi’s cause by citing a fourteenth-century manuscript containing poems by Todi with an ascription to him of the Stabat Mater Dolorosa.

Both Protestants and Catholics share a deep admiration for The Stabat’s pathos, vivid of description, devotional depth all structured in an easy rhythmic flow with exquisite double rhyming and finished stanza form. Catholic scholar, Dr. Philip Schaff (in "Literature and Poetry) says:  "The secret of the power of the 'Mater Dolorosa' lies in the intensity of feeling with which the poet identifies himself with his theme, and in the soft, plaintive melody of its Latin rhythm and rhyme, which cannot be transferred to any other language”  Despite Dr. Schaff’s belief, there are over sixty translations into English

Because of its vividly epic and lyric character, the hymn has received more than 400 musical settings ranging from plainsong to contemporary. Click on (Musical Settings) for Havender Veldon’s website which gives you the most complete website about music written to the text of the Stabat Mater.  The earliest setting came in 1490 by an English composer by the name of John Browne to a 2001 setting by the American contemporary composer William Cooper.  The most famous early plainsong setting is by the French composer Josquin des Pres in 1500.  The three most famous romantic Stabat Maters are by Verdi, Dvorak and Rossini
During the work on the Stabat Mater he lost his first three children. Nonetheless his Stabat Mater ends in a major key, as if in expression of hope. It is said that the style is a mixture of symphonic poem, German oratorio and Italian opera, but still it is written from the heart.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia