# Schubert's German Stabat Mater D383



## William Longland (Jan 20, 2015)

I've just joined the Classical Music Forums.

My choir in London (UK) will soon be performing Schubert's German Stabat Mater, which sets a paraphrase by Friedrich Klopstock of the Latin hymn 'Stabat Mater dolorosa' ascribed to Jacopone da Todi. I have the job of preparing the concert programme, and to my dismay I have not yet found a tolerable English translation of Klopstock's words. I downloaded the words and translation from the website of a choir in Massachusetts, but the English, in its efforts to reproduce the metre of the original, sounds stilted, unnatural, and at times like an extract from The Song of Hiawatha. An example: 

Bei des Mittlers Kreuze standen By the Intercessor's Cross stood 
bang Maria und Johannes anxious Mary there and John stood,
seine Mutter und sein Freund. They his Mother and his friend. 
Durch der Mutter bange Seele Through the Mother's soul so anxious,
ach, durch ihre ganze Seele ah, through her whole soul so anxious,
drang ein Schwert, ja, drang ein Schwert. Pierced a sword, yes, pierced a sword.	

The only other versions I've seen have been either too prosaic (as in the CD note for the Michel Corboz recording) or so free as hardly to constitute a translation at all (the Kalmus/Serenissima Music Inc. vocal score).

Can anyone point me towards a better translation? I need it by mid-March.

Many thanks.


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