FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (1786-7) Image: Bernd Ritschel
Camerata
Anne Loeser – Music Director and Concertmaster
St Peter’s on Willis St. Church
Te Aro, Wellington
Saturday, 5th April, 2025
Co-founder Director of Wellington’s Camerata chamber orchestra, Liz Pritchett, eloquently marked the occasion of the group’s tenth anniversary when welcoming the audience at St.Peter’s-on-Willis- St. Church. to its first concert for 2025, paying tribute to the various efforts of people over the years of the ensemble’s activities in maintaining the ongoing success of the venture. She then introduced Concertmaster Anne Loeser to the platform to begin the evening’s programme, one heralding the liturgical year’s oncoming Easter celebrations by featuring a single work, Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross”, while also continuing the ensemble’s ground-breaking survey of the composer’s orchestral works.
Haydn wrote this work in 1786 responding to a commission from the Bishop of Cádiz for a work to solemnise the Good Friday service the following year at the Oratorio de la Santa Cueva (an underground church in the Spanish city). The work rapidly became popular, being performed on its publication in its original orchestral guise almost simultaneously in Vienna and Bonn – and later in Rome, Berlin and Paris – in fact, so much so that the composer not only adapted the work for string quartet, but also approved a version for solo keyboard which had “turned up” (Haydn apparently edited the proofs of what was probably the work of an enterprising music publisher!). A decade later, inspired by hearing a further adaptation of the work for choir and orchestra by the Passau choirmaster Joseph Freiberth, Haydn decided to go one better and produce his own choral version, which was completed in 1796.
The work, with its self-explanatory title, consists of seven slow movements, one for each of Christ’s seven utterances while on the Cross. They’re often called “sonatas” or “meditations” with the seven individual pieces framed by a slow orchestral introduction and a concluding “Presto con tutta la forza” which depicts the earthquake described by Matthew’s Gospel at the moment of Christ’s death. Here, Camerata used, of course, the original orchestra version, one which forged something of a link with that first performance in Cadiz by having a speaker (Gregory Hill) intone beforehand each of the seven statements by Christ quoted in the various Gospels. Haydn described in a preface to the work something of the structure of the original service, consisting of each of Christ’s utterances, a discourse on its significance, and then the corresponding piece of music – fortunately we were spared the longeurs of such an arrangement on this occasion!
The work’s dark, D Minor introduction, Maestoso ed Adagio, straightaway engaged our attention, with the players’ fully-voiced and deep-throated sounds generating a real sense of impending tragedy and sorrow, and throwing into relief the more consoling F-major sequences before the opening’s inevitable, inescapable return. The mood actually lightened with the first of Christ’s utterances to be reflected in the music’s phrasings – “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, the tones conciliatory and stressing the idea of mercy and forgiveness even in the face of betrayal, mockery and abandonment merely hinted at here by the occasional intimation of darkness.
Similar sentiments coloured the exchange between Christ and the repentant thief via the words “Today, you will be with me in Paradise”. Major and minor key sequences readily brought to us the drama of the encounter, with forceful attack by the strings on the high exposed notes, followed by the reprise of the opening reaffirming Christ’s positive recognition of the sinner’s repentance. In a different context was the great and touching tenderness which came over the music for the following “Woman, behold thy son”, where Jesus enjoins his mother to regard her vigil’s companion John the Apostle as her son in his place, the “held” chords at the phrase-beginnings and the two-note answerings especially affecting, as were the even more plaintive interactions between strings and winds in the music’s development.
With the dramatic “My God, my God, whv has thou forsaken me?” the level of angst and anguish was suddenly heightened, though with the music’s exhortations reiterated in a major key, having the effect of “humanising” the suffering, the solo violin passages concentrating one’s concept of a single person’s ordeal with its exposed quality, extended by the cello’s and others’ solo lines. And how piteously Haydn then honed in on this suffering in the following “I thirst”, firstly by the poignant use of pizzicato notes as a background to the words, then forthright repeated-note patterns suggesting the suffering Christ’s extreme duress, as the heart-rending call is echoed by the various winds – also, how affecting is the recapitulation of these various piteous elements of the scene, as the drama draws closer to its end! One must pay special tribute to the brasses in these darker, more dramatic sequences, their colourings adding weight and gravitas to the depictions for our increased absorption!
The drama then enacted, it seemed, a number of “conclusions” of a kind, the first being the finality of the words “It is finished” – a bald unison statement, then a harmonised repetition through the orchestra, the composer alternating the “bare” melody with the harmonised version, as if indicating an eventual cessation of suffering, and an attaining of a “better place”, which indicates why the music didn’t return to the minor key-opening. Then came the final grand statement “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit”, the last of the utterances and a total acceptance, indicated by a warmly sonorous E-flat major – in fact, the music here almost becomes balletic in places, with a triple-time decorative figure appearing for a number of bars – an undeniable sense of occasion, coupled with a certain expectation – but of what?
The answer, of course, came with the final, unnerving “Il terremoto” (The Earthquake), voiced in a frenzied C Minor, which the rushing strings , the thundering timpani and the baleful winds and brasses made splendid use of with suitably telling characterful and concerted seismic gesturings – as if the composer was here adding his voice to all those who have since proclaimed that “this, truly, was the Son of God”. It brought a precipitate finish to what had been a largely contemplative occasion, one whose reflective meditation on aspects of the human condition with its capacities for empathy, forgiveness and love made for a moving and worthwhile experience.