A Sublime Performance

Imagine a long piece of orchestral music (more than 70 minutes, in fact) that: starts with a slow, austere introduction designated Maestoso ed Adagio (slowly and majestically); is followed by a movement designated Largo (slow, stately, and with ample breadth); in turn is followed by a movement designated Grave e Cantabile (heavy, ponderous, yet singing). Also imagine five additional movements, each in a different gradation of slow or very slow tempo, and each imbued with a somber religiosity. Finally, imagine the work ending with a brief, very fast, but minor-key finale.

On the surface this sounds like a none-too-promising game plan for a lengthy piece of music. Keeping in mind that the composer using this musical template was Haydn, a musical genius who seemed to thrive on limitations and restrictions, and who had a penchant for turning liabilities into assets, it's quite plausible that this piece of music would somehow "work." Well, it not only worked, but it turned out to be one of the most emotionally moving flights of sustained musical imagination to come from his long and estimable career.

The piece is The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross. It was commissioned in 1785 by a Spanish aristocratic cleric, one Don Jose Marco Saluz de Santa Maria, Marques de Valde-Inigo. The music was to be integrated into a Good Friday service in which, as Haydn states in the preface to the choral version of this same work that he prepared in 1801:

"After an appropriate prelude, the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced one of the Seven Words, and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and knelt prostrate before the altar. This pause was filled with music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, and then the third, and so on, the orchestra falling in at the conclusion of the discourse."

Each of the seven slow movements (not counting the opening Introduction, or the closing "Il Terremoto") is a musical meditation on each of the Seven Words. Taking the first as a representative example: the opening phrase of the music supports the scansion of the unsung Latin line, making the music seem to grow out of it, and as it continues, the music “says" what the words can only imply. In a letter dated April 8, 1787, Haydn stated that "... each text is expressed by purely instrumental music in such a fashion that it should produce the deepest impression on the most uninstructed listener."

Haydn, in order to avoid monotony, employed ten different tonalities and exploited virtually every instrumental color to be found in the late 18th-century orchestra. The work was a stunning success; the composer, with his customary sagacity, quickly produced a string quartet reduction, and later, in 1801, a choral version. During the year of its premiere in Cadiz (1787), incidentally, Haydn also secured performances of it in both Vienna and in Bonn, and quickly got it published all over Europe and in England. He knew he had produced something extraordinary. The first US performance was as early as 1796.

As a somewhat incongruous postlude to this little article, Haydn's Spanish patron devised an unusual way in which to deliver the composer's honorarium. He shipped a chocolate cake to Esterhazy, addressed to Haydn. When Haydn opened the box and saw only a cake, he was justifiably incensed. He angrily grabbed a knife and cut into it to find it filled with gold pieces.

Of this performance by the Orchestra of St. Luke's under Julius Rudel, I can say no more than that it is worthy of the music. Or, to put it another way, this is sublime music sublimely realized.