It was the fall of 2014, on Mount Subasio, in Armenzano of Assisi (Umbria) where I lived, (my radical choice of life devoted to simplicity and poverty; to the work of the land) when a melody began to "torment me”. I thought it was reminiscent of my studies as a child when I sang as a soloist in the Choir of the Sistine Chapel in the eighties, so much so that it seemed foreign to my compositional style. After a long time chasing success in the field of rock (with modest results) since two years I was convinced never to return to writing or playing music.
Not finding what it resembled, I timidly caressed the idea of using this melody to write a Hail Mary, but something was wrong with regard to the metric and the emotional content. Then, quite by accident, I came across the text of Jacopone da Todi's prayer. I remember both my amazement to hear those words perfectly match that melody and my dismay in realising that I had to work (who knows how much) to set the rest of the text to music and ....where would inspiration be found? So I put it aside and I returned to my everyday life: to the solitude among hoes and spades, animals, silence, prayer and long walks among the trees of those woods so beloved of St. Francis. After some time Dean wrote me a letter in which he invited me to take up the responsibility of dedicating all of myself to the composition, though I had "received" only the beginning, He gave me the nerve to start working by picking up an old half-broken classical guitar, bought for 5 euros from a farmer, a ‘bucket’ in jargon, as the only tool available to me!
First of all, to find inspiration, I decided to meditate on the Via Crucis and set myself the goal of completing the work by Easter. I began to design the various Stations, choosing to approach the Body of Jesus, as much as possible, with the ambitious intent to renew that iconographic tradition through the gaze that the prayer of the Blessed Umbrian imposes on the events of the Passion of Christ. That same look of Maria, the Mother, to whom the poet prays, imploring to share with him even a drop of her pain, a single tear, so that he can learn by grace what it means to love. Musically it seemed to me like I had embarked on an archaeological excavation; as if I had twelve blocks of earth and, assenting to the daily work, I did nothing but lend my hands to dig them: extracting those
precious objects already contained inside them. I must say that somehow, in taking care of it, this music has taken care of me. Dean soon invited me to visit him and so I left Assisi for England where, I gradually returned back to work in music but even there any attempt to record the Stabat has been always premature. It seemed to want to live only in the context of prayer or in the reality of direct human contact until two years ago, when I was engaged in the making of my friend Nick Mulvey's record at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios and I was offered the necessary help for recording, thanks to a good word from producer Ethan Jones. It was in those days that I became aware that Nick's house was on the estate of Wardour Castle, and of the Castle Chapel, where Julian Bream recorded most of his famous albums. In short, a temple of classical guitar!
The owner of the castle, welcomed my idea of recording there and not by chance, the only day when everyone was available was March 17th, Saint Partick’s day, the fourth Friday of Lent. In the morning the young sound engineer Patrick Phillips and his colleague Ollie Jacobs mounted a mobile station in the chapel's sacristy and placed the microphones. I played the whole Stabat Mater twice without stopping, with only Dean sitting on the first bench of the empty church. The same evening, around eight o'clock, guests began to arrive and created the right atmosphere. Dean welcomed the fifty friends gathered and introduced the evening. Father Martin read the famous Saint Patrick's Shield and I closed my eyes and played what became the third take. A little later, with my brother Carlo, we put together the best of the three takes, trying to avoid the inevitable noises of the public and a few false notes but leaving it as natural as possible.
This year, finally, once again coinciding with Lent, thanks to Patrick's generosity, we found ourselves in his bright Bristol studio mixing our work, taking advantage, after all, of the gap; the work had matured over time and we easily
obtained a result of which we are most excited! This booklet, where Jacopone da Todi's text is accompanied with the Gospel passages and the illustrations of the relative stations, is created to give the listener the possibility to use it also as a prayer tool, such as this music is for me and in its own nature.

Federico