Die deutschsprachigen Fassungen von Haydns Stabat mater

Abstract

The first print of Joseph Haydn’s Stabat mater was the Schwickert piano-reduction from 1781. It includes only the German text by Johann Adam Hiller. Two years earlier Hiller brought his German version to its first performance at the university-church in Leipzig. He wanted to make this work known in Protestant churches of Germany, where Latin was “not appropriate”. The German text minimizes the reference to Mary and accentuates the Protestant-typical Christo-centrism. 1803 Breitkopf sets in the first print of the score both the Latin and the German text. Some different versions (for instance by Findeisen and Christmann) were also successful efforts adapting the work into the Protestant liturgy, like J. S. Bach did with Pergolesi’s Stabat mater . Indeed, some sources include choral settings between the original numbers, resembling the form of a typical Protestant church-cantata. Translations and adaptations were prerequisites of wide reception in Protestant parts of Middle and Northern Germany, where the requirement of sophisticated passion-music in form of cantatas was considerably, also after 1800.