On this webpage: https://www.aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/04/stond-wel-moder-under-rode.html I discovered a medieval English song: Stand well, Moder, under Rode. You can find this song in several manuscripts after 1250. It is modelled directly on the 11-stanza Latin sequence Stabat juxta Christi crucem.
The song invites, like the Stabat Mater, to sympathise with Mary and her Son, dying on the cross (rode). Meditation on their sorrows, as a way of entering into the experience of the Crucifixion, was an increasingly popular devotional theme in Middle Ages.
The situation is being represented even in a more poignant way while Mary and Christ talk to each other. Their tender speeches are intensely intimate, vivid and believable. Christ is trying to comfort her and explaining the necessity of his death: saving mankind. But his mother is unable to look beyond his immediate suffering. Christ is asking an impossible, paradoxical emotional response from her: to rejoice as she sees her son dying. Text and music are full of deep emotion, sorrow and love. Such a lively and credible dialogue you can’t find in the old Latin hymns.
In the Middle Ages it is believed that Mary suffered no pain in her pregnancy and childbirth. She felt the anguish of motherhood at last when her son died. Therefore, Stabat Mater and Stond well, Moder, both are meant to support all mothers who suffer because of the losss of their children. The last two stanzas are about the joyous outcome of the Passion, and the poem ends with the narrator petitioning for mercy. Two manuscripts preserve the song with musical notes.

For music, text,  translation, explanation and beautiful images of Mary at the foot of the cross, from the Anglo-Saxon period to the fourteenth century, please see: https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/04/stond-wel-moder-under-rode.html
For me, the most moving sung version, is that by Stephanie Prewitt and Daniel Johnson (also playing the psaltery), a sober and personal performance. I contacted Stephanie Prewitt and she was kind enough to share the video with me. Thanks!
(video will be added soon)

Mr. and Mrs. Lee from Baltimore were kind enough to inform me about an extraordinary cd with a Stabat Mater:  plain song in alternation with organ, the famous restored barrel organ in the church of St. Chaffrey! In this Stabat Mater, the organ parts sound like a Mozart opera and the final parts, after stanza 18 is a note for note transcription of one of Cherubini’s aria’s from Le nozze di Figaro: Voi che sapete! A barrel organ in church? I think it is very unusual, and the Mozart style of the organ pieces alternating the Stabat Mater stanza’s, it is fascinating. The English text on the cover of the cd says:

The style of the pieces notated on the perforated rolls of parchment of the
church barrel organ of St-Chaffrey illustrates the ‘present state’ of liturgi-
cal music at the time, which some of the reforming Benedictine monks and
other nineteenth-century musicians unhesitatingly called decadent. They
were quite virulent in their denunciation of secular music, particularly
opera, in worship. They condemned singers who made a habit of accenting
each note of the plainchant melody, sometimes likening the result to the
cries of animals! The most flagrant example is the Stabat Mater, in which
the versets played alternately by the organ are really Mozartian operatic
paraphrases, and on one occasion (the twenty-seventh verset) a note for
note transcription of one of Cherubino’s arias!

I would like to have more detailed information about this Stabat. Anyone who can help me? Thanks!

A friend of mine who lives in Cape Town has always been interested in and supportive as for my Stabat Mater website. He told me about a special Pergolesi Stabat Mater performance with dance by Cape Town Opera, Cape Town City Ballet and Camerata Tinta Barocca. This project provides an emotional and artistic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, conceptualized specifically for filming and digital dissemination. I was delighted to buy a ticket and could not wait watching the video! It is fascinating: a baroque orchestra and two opera singers are joined by six dancers in a huge studio, the floor marked in squares to which each performer is confined to enable social distancing. Two dancers, Jan and Nicolas, co-habited during lockdown in South Africa and were therefore the only dancers to touch each other in the show. This wonderful work was choreographed, remotely via video call from London by Mthuthuzeli November (he just won the 2020 Olivier Award!). The performers only came together at the last minute.
I watched the video several times and I love it, it is moving and comforting right now when theaters and concert halls are closed for such a long time! And… I could not help thinking of another dance Stabat Mater by Pergolesi, a pre-covid one!

I got in touch with the artistic director of Cape Town Opera Mr. Matthew Wild and he was kind enough to arrange for Wyrd Films to share a part of the performance for my blog and site. In the video The concept Mr. Wild gives a brief introduction to the performance.The video is abridged to 23 minutes for potential television broadcast. Seven of twelve parts are performed:

I     Stabat Mater (soprano and mezzo-soprano)
IV  Quae moerebat et dolebat (mezzo-soprano)
V    Vidit suum dulcem natum (soprano)
VII Eja mater (soprano and mezzo-soprano)
IX   Sancta mater (soprano and mezzo-soprano)
XI   Inflammatus et accensus (soprano and mezzo-soprano)
XII  Quando corpus (soprano and mezzo-soprano)

You can still book tickets to watch the video till the end of November at: tickets.computicket.com

Desmond Fisher was an Irish journalist, who worked as a reporter, correspondent and newspaper editor in the United Kingdom, the United States and in his native Ireland. Desmond got in touch with me after he stumbled upon The Ultimate Stabat Mater Site during his research for his book Stabat Mater, the Mystery Hymn. Desmond Fisher was fascinated by the Latin poem and dedicated the final two years of his life to this book. He was interested in how true the familiar English translations are to the original Latin. What did the author really try to say? Why did he use a particular poetic style? And… who was the author anyway? His first objective was to determine which of the seven listed contenders was the most likely candidate as composer of the Stabat Mater poem. This list includes three Popes, three Saints and one layman, Jacopone da Todi. Desmond Fisher thought it most likely that Jacopone da Todi was the composer, despite having been imprisoned and excommunicated by a pope. In Chapter 8, titled Pros and Cons, Fisher presents ten(!)  arguments arguing for Jacopone da Todi’s authorship. However, he concludes by saying:

…Nevertheless, in spite of all those arguments in favour of Jacopone’s authorship of the poem, it has to be admitted that in style and content it is very different from the other poems that can be definitely credited to him…

Only after this solid, historical study to the origin and authorship of the Stabat Mater text, Desmond presents and explains the two translations he made himself; a literal translation from the latin text, and a more poetic interpretation in verse. He then compares, analyses, and discusses several other well-known English translations of the poem by Edward Caswall, Beatrice E. Bulman, D. F. MacCarthy and the Collegeville Hymnal.

I was delighted to read Chapter 23, A Dutch Contribution  which is dedicated to the initiator of the Ultimate Stabat Mater site, Hans van der Velden. Hans’ English translation is also presented in the book! The book was published in 2015. Desmond Fisher died on 30 December 2014; he was 94 years old. His son, John Fisher, was so kind to contact me and send me a copy of the book. Thank you so much!

In 2018 Tom Dawkes was so kind to send me an e-mail about the Irish Gaelic translation on my site. Tom must have a real talent for languages, as today I received a revised translation of the Maltese translation on my site! This is what he wrote to me:

…listening this morning to a programme about the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. One of the items played was a section of his Stabat mater, and this put me in mind of your website. I noticed that you have a Maltese version, and as I encountered Maltese through a school friend I have kept an interest in it — though I have never visited Malta and would not claim more than a smattering of the language. I do, though, know about the structure of the language, and how it is written, and I could see that many words were written in a simplified form. 

Maltese uses the Roman alphabet, but adds some extra letters : ċ as in English cheese; ż as in English zoo, whereas z is like German z as in Zeit; ġ as in English gem, whereas g is as in English get; and ħ, which is like hin English help, whereas Maltese h is silent as in English honour (the combination għ is silent, but lengthens the preceding vowel). 

I cannot claim that it is 100% accurate — I ran it through the Google Translate web-page, which is a useful help, despite some very odd results from time to time —  and a Maltese speaker would undoubtedly want to make some further corrections, but I am confident it is nearer to an authentic Maltese text. The translation matches the Latin fairly closely, and where you have given more than one Latin version I have retained the one that most closely matches the Maltese…

On the web page Missing Cds you will find a list of over 400 composers who may have composed a Stabat Mater that never has been recorded or even never has been performed. It always makes me happy to delete one from the list as I did recently with Howard Blake and Nicola Logroscino.
Andrea Bernasconi, a composer on my list, was born in Italy, in 1706. Andrea started his career in Italy but in 1755 he was appointed to the post of Kapellmeister at the Bavarian court in Munich where he produced several operas, a few symphonies and a great deal of church music. The manuscripts of the church music were preserved in the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in Munich until 1944, when the entire collection was destroyed by Allied bombing. Fortunately a few of the sacred works survived in other libraries, including two settings of the Stabat Mater in C minor and G minor. This is what I learned from Mr. John A. Rice who contacted me about Bernasconi. Mr. Rice is a music historian and he is responsible for the YouTube channel Settecentista. The primary aims of his videos are two:
1) to help listeners learn the conventions–melodic, harmonic, and formal–that underlie eighteenth-century music; and 2) to introduce listeners to the musical delights and analytical insights that await them as they go beyond the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
He is working on an edition of the two Stabat Mater settings, which (as far as he knows) have not been performed since the eighteenth century. John Rice was so kind to share this video with me. For me it is interesting to have a first hearing of the opening movement in a ‘virtual performance’ which we, John Rice and me, hope will encourage choral conductors to perform it ‘live’.
NB: The words in capital letters above the music refer to voice-leading schemata as introduced by Robert Gjerdingen in his book “Music in the Galant Style.” Some of the terms (such as Prinner and Sol-Fa-Mi) were introduced by Gjerdingen in his book; others (such as Lully and Le-Sol-Fi-Sol) were introduced by others, including John Rice.