Voces Suaves: Stabat Mater

The vocal ensemble Voces Suaves will be performing a haunting Passion program on 19 November in the Alter Dom Linz, centred around Domenico Scarlatti's poignant "Stabat Mater". Baroque sacred music of great emotional depth unfolds in the special atmosphere of the church interior - a sound space between devotion, pain and timeless beauty.

One of the most famous settings of the penitential psalm Miserere was written by the Italian priest and composer Gregorio Allegri. Written exclusively for the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1627, the musicians performing it were strictly forbidden to copy or pass on the music at the time. In 1770, however, the then fourteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadé Mozart defied this ban, which made the work even more famous: after attending a performance of the work during Holy Week in Rome, he wrote it down from memory. In the atmospheric setting of the Old Cathedral in Linz, the Swiss ensemble Voces Suaves complements Allegri's Miserere with other highlights of Italian sacred vocal music by Baroque composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Lotti and Domenico Scarlatti