Joseph Haydn: The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross, Version for Violin and Piano

Description

The violin and piano version of Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Musica instrumentale sopra le 7 ultime parole del nostro Redentore in croce, ovvero Sette Sonate con una Introduzione ed alla fine un Terremoto,” more commonly known as “The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross” (Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze – Hob:XX:1), is not one of the composer’s own creations. There is no record of it being published, at least not in modern times.
Haydn, who conceived the work in 1787 for an orchestra with winds, timpani, and strings, considered it one of his finest works. Given its success, he personally arranged a string quartet transcription (Hob:XX:2) and approved a keyboard arrangement (Hob:XX:3) by his publisher Artaria of Vienna in the same year. Subsequently, in 1796, he produced a version in the form of an oratorio for soloists, choir, and orchestra.
The transcription for violin and piano offered here has been tested on stage and it proved its effectiveness. The piano part, based on the Urtext of Henle Verlag for solo piano, has been adapted considering the expressive capabilities of the “modern” piano, with its wide range and eloquence, quite different from the fortepiano of Haydn’s period and therefore from the corresponding typical writing of the time. Hence, the original orchestral score published by Henle Verlag was primarily consulted for any doubling and expansion of the sound spectrum across wider octaves, reworking some solutions primarily orchestral in favor of a more idiomatic piano writing, avoiding a literal “piano reduction” that would have ended up sounding like mere accompaniment. A choice was made underlying this work, which also took into account the “modern” violin and hence the sounds to which the literature for duos, at least from the mid-19th century onwards, has progressively accustomed us. Deliberately, it was not chosen to create an arrangement suitable for “period” instruments, as the final result would have added little to the existing autograph versions: it would not have had the emphasis and power of the orchestra, nor the roundness and intimacy of the string quartet. The wide range of colors and expression that the modern duo has at its disposal seemed to us to encompass both the dynamic possibilities required of the orchestra and the various expressive nuances typical of the string quartet.
For the drafting of the violin part, in addition to considering the two aforementioned original sources, sometimes divergent regarding articulation and dynamics, the Urtext of the first violin part of the quartet version, published by Henle Verlag, was primarily taken into account. Nothing has been altered from the original dynamics. The most suitable articulations, given the presence of the modern piano, were suggested through bowing signs, without interfering with the original slurs and phrasing indicated in the text. Some harmonies have been added, essentially taken from the second violin part (of the quartet version), to soften certain punctuations that would have left the violin too isolated in the high register, or to better complement the original overall harmony. The general sound essentially takes into account the “different” sonic context in which the violin operates when interacting with a modern piano, where a character and thus a timbre more akin to Sturm und Drang shifts the sonic center of gravity of the work to the period of Haydn’s later years, to the first decade of the 19th century, when the musical world had already experienced the Beethovenian temperament (the Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer” was published in 1805) and the doors of Romanticism were about to be flung open. A period that Haydn was well acquainted with.

Franz Joseph Haydn was a staunch Catholic throughout his life, and the encounter between his faith, his talent, and his personality produced one of the finest outputs of sacred music in the history of Western music. Haydn was gifted with a very positive and genial character, with a robust sense of humour, and with a benevolent and benign attitude. These traits bring even to the most serious or tragic of his works a tinge of light, a ray of gentleness, an opening to hope. Whilst the subject matter of, for instance, The Creation, one of his masterpieces in the sacred field, invites a joyful approach, in the awed and enchanted contemplation of the beauty of nature as it exits the hands of its Creator, an entirely different panorama is that offered by The Last Seven Words of Our Saviour on the Cross; yet, in spite of the utter sadness of this subject, Haydn manages to render it idiomatically, with hope, with a smile whenever it is possible to find one.
The origins of this masterpiece are narrated by Haydn himself, who reports: “The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn darkness. At midday, the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and fell to his knees before the altar. The interval was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits”.
The service was based on a pious devotion, that of the “Seven Last Words”. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are narrated – as is well known – in the four Gospels, three of which are called “synoptics” (after a Greek word meaning that they can be “seen together”). In fact, the narrative of the synoptics can be read in parallel, although each Gospel presents episodes, traits, emphases of its own. From a very early time, some Fathers of the Church had proposed a “harmonization” of the Gospels (starting first from the synoptics, and later incorporating St. John’s Gospel as well) allowing the reader to follow the narrative in a chronological order, and including all episodes found globally in the four stories. In each and every Gospel, the presentation of the last day of Jesus’ life (his Passion) occupies a very substantial portion of the text. The agony of Jesus lasted several hours on the cross, and during that time he uttered seven sentences (“words”), none of which is reported by all Gospels (and, on the other hand, no Gospel reports them all). The number seven had a long history of “sacredness”, characterizing already the Jewish Scripture and tradition, and then migrating to Christianity: Christian readers were understandably impressed and intrigued by the fact that, together, the four Gospels contained precisely this number of “last utterances” by the Lord on the Cross.
These seven sentences were ordered according to a presumed chronology, but also building up a kind of spiritual itinerary. The first and last, both taken from the Gospel of Luke, are prayers from Jesus to the Father: the first invokes the Father’s mercy on those crucifying the Son, and the last implores the Father to receive the spirit of the dying Jesus. The second is addressed to a very different interlocutor, i.e. the so-called “Good Thief” – an evildoer who was crucified together with Jesus, but who asked for the Lord’s remembrance and obtained the promise of Heaven. The third is spoken to the two people dearest to Jesus, both of whom were present at the Calvary – his Mother, Mary, and his beloved disciple, John.
At the heart of the cycle, the centerpiece, the fourth Word, is the most terrible of all. Once more, it is a prayer, but this time it seems to convey the full weight of Christ’s pain and anguish: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The last three Words prepare the accomplishment of Christ’s life and mission: “I thirst”, expressing His last longing and yearning; “It is done”, marking the fulfillment of his Passion and of the purpose for which it was lived; and, as briefly mentioned above, His last prayer to the Father.
Haydn’s musical setting includes also an Introduction and a postlude. Each Sonata expresses the content and context of the corresponding Word in a twofold fashion: firstly, through a depiction of the “atmosphere” (and Haydn was particularly fascinated by the possibilities of word-painting, as amply demonstrated in The Creation and in countless “descriptive” Symphonies); secondly, by building the main theme in such a fashion that the sentence could be sung upon its notes. In this way, the “word” keeps resonating in the listeners’ minds through the music which ceaselessly repeats it, thus stimulating and encouraging a deep contemplation.
The descending motif on which the word “Pater” can be sung in the first Sonata, for instance, becomes a caressing musical gesture which expresses the tenderness of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father; the same love is found in a very similar musical profile, on the word “Mulier” (Woman, or rather Lady) with which Jesus addresses his Mother. Sitio, “I thirst”, is entirely punctuated by the staccatos which may evoke both the raindrops longed for by Jesus and the stinging pain of his thirst. The sense of forsakenness, and the loss of a horizon of meaning it implies, are suggested by the absence of harmonic support and the wandering melodies, full of dissonances, of Deus meus. The double meaning of It is done (the solemnity of the accomplished sacrifice, and the joy for the fulfillment of the mission) is masterfully proposed by employing the same melodic profile (that of a harmonic cadence) in two entirely different versions. The fading of Christ’s last heartbeats touchingly closes the last Sonata, paving the way for the only virtuoso and almost violent piece, the concluding Earthquake (“Terremoto”). These few examples may suffice to demonstrate how aptly did Haydn render the beauty, intensity, and profundity of the Seven Last Words, and how beautifully did he cloth them with his music.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024