In my end is my starting

IN 1994, the BBC was at its most imaginative and inventive. Starting on the Eve of Palm Sunday, it broadcast the première of Sir James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross over seven nights. To my mind, this work stands because the equal of anything written prior to now half century, by any composer, anywhere on the earth. It’s price looking theologically at what MacMillan is doing musically.

The tradition of seven “words” collects Christ’s utterances from the cross (“word” used here to consult with any phrase or sentence in an inventory, as when the Ten Commandments are called the Decalogue: the “ten words”).

Since no Gospel records all these utterances, their precise order just isn’t laid down. Some, nevertheless, seem earlier, others to return just before Christ’s death. MacMillan follows a conventional sequence. The biblical texts furnish only just a few words for every musical movement. MacMillan responded by combining them with texts from the Holy Week liturgy, just about all taken directly from the Bible.

1. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34)

WERE we to have these ten words only, and nothing of the remaining of scripture, they might still deliver the message of God’s grace in Christ. Indeed, MacMillan sometimes finds all he needs in the primary three words — even only the primary two. It is as if, in his agony, Christ’s whole mind is contracted to the shortest expression of his attitude towards sinful humanity.

His words are combined with the gang’s acclamation on Palm Sunday: “Hosanna to the Son of David . . . to the King of Israel” (Matthew 21.9; John 12.13). Those are the words, however the tone is that of the subsequent time the gang cries out (“Crucify him!”); this statement of his kingship belongs to not Palm Sunday, but to the inscription attached to the cross (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”).

A 3rd text is repeated to a straightforward chant: “The life that I held dear I delivered into the hands of the unrighteous and my inheritance has grow to be for me like a lion within the forest. . .” (based on Jeremiah 12.7-11). It is with this text that the movement fades out, this repetition not reaching its end. The work was written to be performed, at first, on successive evenings, each evening ending with an outline of Christ’s death.

2. Woman, behold thy son! . . . Behold, thy mother! (John 19.26-27)

THIS movement opens with the words “Woman, behold thy son!”, set like an imposing chorale, the voices moving almost entirely in step, with a unique chord for every syllable. From repetition to repetition there may be a disorientating swerve of harmony, and the interweaving of parts becomes increasingly complex. None the less, the sonorous top voice at all times works with the identical five notes or pitches, returning to the primary version for the sixth statement of the words. Christ’s love for Mary and for John, and the intensity of his desire to supply for them, in making a latest family from the cross, stays steadfast, amid all of the musical changes. After a string interlude, these words are repeated five more times. Only on the very end will we hear “Behold, behold, behold thy mother”. Christ is overcome with pain, and might speak those words just once, almost entirely on a single note.

3. Verily, I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise (Luke 23.43)

THIS movement opens with the acclamation of the cross from the liturgy of Good Friday: “Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the saviour of the world!”, followed by the customary response “Come, allow us to worship!” As within the litany, it’s sung thrice, each at a better pitch (here, passing from basses to tenors to altos).

The first word “Behold” (Ecce in Latin) picks up the start of the previous movement (“Woman, behold thy son”). The words that gesture to the cross are chant-like, although with a melody that sounds more Eastern (more melismatic and modal) than the Western plainsong melodies we hear elsewhere within the Seven Last Words, and more complex and discordant than we might find in any Christian liturgy. In contrast, “Come allow us to worship” is harmonically peaceful, with the accompaniment of a soaring countermelody on the violins, supported by arching broken chords. Only at the top, after a string interlude, will we hear “Verily, I say unto you, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise, thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

4. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27.46)

IT TYPIFIES the absence of sentimentality in MacMillan’s Seven Last Words that the central “word” among the many seven ought to be Christ’s cry of desolation. It is given within the Aramaic reproduced within the Gospels. There are three sections: one ascending; one highly complex, with eight interwoven parts, often discordant; and one largely descending. We might consider the complex middle section as showing that it takes the cries of many overlapping voices even to start to specific Christ’s anguish.

5. I thirst (John 19.28)

THE composer combines the shorter “word” — about thirst — with a line from the Good Friday Reproaches: an element of the liturgy where God’s goodness is contrasted with human wickedness, expressed within the crucifixion. He has chosen the verse to do with drinking: “I even have given you to drink of life-giving water from the rock, but you’ve given me to drink of gall and vinegar.” It is to be sung “staggered, individually or in groups”, sometimes on a single note, sometimes whispered.

The repetitions of Christ’s words “I thirst” move from quiet to loud, and harmonically from simplicity to complexity. Their final statement lacks all vigour. A piece for strings, with which the piece ends, incorporates a sudden, disconcerting tremolo, rising then falling in intensity, labelled within the rating “like a violent shuddering”.

6. It is finished (John 19.30)

THIS movement starts with discordant, percussive chords, at first in pairs, after which becoming rhythmically more complex. Our attention is caught by the soprano line, singing words from Lamentations (1.12, 16) that are utilized in the service of Tenebrae on Good Friday: “My eyes were blind with weeping. . . Consider all you people, is there any sorrow like my sorrow. . .” The three lower voices sing “It is finished!”, but this is not any statement of triumph: the melody and harmony are stuffed with chromatic tension, and the words are partly submerged under the soprano part.

Those words of Christ eventually tackle an upward trajectory, after which something more like melodic completeness. The modesty with which they’re treated is subsequently no denigration of what Christ has achieved, but simply a refusal to show from the associated fee of the way it was achieved; and the movement ends with the words from Lamentations: “Is there any sorrow like mine?”

7. Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit (Luke 23.46)

THE final movement begins with a series of extraordinary chords, the primary using all seven notes of the size without delay (here within the Lydian mode). This saturated harmony expresses, perhaps, the plenitude of God addressing God.

This movement offers remarkable parallels and contrasts with the second movement (“Woman, behold thy son”). There, with Christ’s humanity to the fore (as a person addressing his mother), the harmony is gorgeous but straightforward: it’s diatonic (i.e. with no notes from outside the house key), a minimum of in the primary statement. Here, in the ultimate movement, Christ addresses God in line with the definitive character of his divinity: as Son to Father. With the everlasting divine relationship to the fore, the harmony dazzles and lurches (as some object from a better dimension would, appearing in three spatial dimensions).

And yet, if we follow the highest line of the opening words (“Father, Father, Father”), for all they’re supported by that string of remarkable chords, we trace out the exact same melody that first rang out for “Woman, behold thy son!” MacMillan is mentioning the parallel — higher than I even have ever heard it preached — between Christ addressing his mother and addressing his Father; between commending Mary and John to one another, and commending his own spirit to his Father.

THE words “Father, Father, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” take a couple of minute and 1 / 4 to perform, after which comes a string passage lasting about one other seven minutes. Seven Last Words is usually distinctly Scottish, but never more so than here. MacMillan’s masterpiece ends with a straightforward Scottish lament for 2 string parts.

The work deals with that which is most universal in scope: with death and loss, with sin and redemption. It does so, as the best art at all times does, in a way that is very particular. Here is a Scottish composer responding to the death of the person who’s Lord and God (and, importantly, MacMillan’s Lord and God) as might a composer from northern Britain. As he has written, “In this final movement, with its long instrumental postlude, the liturgical detachment breaks down and provides option to a more personal reflection: hence the resonance here of Scottish traditional lament music.”

THE composer has still yet another remarkable idea left. The string music fades in volume and becomes not more than notes, a semitone apart. The notes get shorter. They grow to be further apart. Their spacing becomes erratic. They fall into silence. These are surely the ultimate breaths of Incarnate God.

Could anything be more moving than that? Perhaps, if we recall the work that had brought MacMillan to public attention two years before: his concerto for percussion Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”). Woven all the way through that concerto is the heartbeat of the Incarnate God: infant, perhaps still unborn. What he had depicted there at its starting he depicts here at its end.

The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity within the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church.

The Seven Last Words: Passion music beyond Bach’s Passions

ALTHOUGH settings of the total story of the Passion get probably the most attention around Holy Week (notably those by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Penderecki, and Pärt, as an illustration), the words from the cross have also been set to music over and over. The most famous example can be probably the most unusual, by Josef Haydn. These started off as an instrumental work, written to be performed on Good Friday 1786 in Cadiz Cathedral between sermons on each of the words. A final movement depicts the earthquake. The following 12 months, Haydn adapted it for string quartet, only in 1796 reaching a version for choir and orchestra.

Earlier musical treatments of the words include a brief work by Heinrich Schütz (c.1645-1650). Nineteenth century France gives us settings by César Franck (written in about 1859, rediscovered in 1977), and Theodore Dubois (1867). Sofia Gubaidulina (1982) followed Haydn with a purely instrumental response in her Seven Words for cello, bayan (a type of accordion), and strings, wherein she quotes the Schütz.