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Program
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIXTH SEASON
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant
Friday, February 17, 2017, at 7:30
Holy Name Cathedral
MEMBERS OF THE CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Riccardo Muti Conductor
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich Archbishop of Chicago
Haydn
The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross, Hob. XX/1A
Introduction
Sonata 1: Largo
Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt
(Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do)
Sonata 2: Grave e cantabile
Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso
(Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise)
Sonata 3: Grave
Mulier, ecce filius tuus
(Woman, behold thy son!)
Sonata 4: Largo
Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquisti me?
(My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?)
Sonata 5: Adagio
Sitio
(I thirst)
Sonata 6: Lento
Consummatum est
(It is finished)
Sonata 7: Largo
In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum
(Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit)
Earthquake: Presto e con tutta la forza
This performance is generously underwritten by Mary Louise Gorno, the Walter E. Heller Foundation in honor of Alyce DeCosta,
The Julian Family Foundation in memory of Kenneth A. Julian, Eric and Melanie Kalnins, Jim and SuAnne Lopata, Mike and Adele Murphy,
and Megan and Steve Shebik.
Comments
BY PHILLIP HUSCHER
I n 1687, earthquakes shook Peru. As
a way of responding, a Jesuit priest,
Alonso Messia Bedoya, created
a Good Friday devotion based on the
seven last utterances that Jesus
is said to have
made from the
cross. This kind of
service eventually
migrated from
Peru to Spain.
In 1786, the
great Austrian
composer Franz
Portrait of Haydn
Joseph Haydn
by Christian Ludwig
received a letter,
Seehas, 1785
in Latin, from
a cleric at the church of Santa Cueva
in the Spanish seaport town of Cádiz,
requesting orchestral music for its Holy
Week services.
“In those days,” Haydn later recalled,
“it was the custom each year in Lent
to perform an oratorio in the principal
church in Cádiz.
The walls, windows, and pillars of the
church were covered with black cloth,
and one single great lamp hanging
in the middle illuminated the sacred
darkness. At noon all the doors were
closed: Now the music began. After
an appropriate prelude, the bishop
mounted the pulpit, pronounced one
of the Seven Words, and offered a
meditation upon it. As soon as it was
over, he descended from the pulpit
and fell on his knees before the altar.
The interval was filled by music. The
bishop ascended and descended from
the pulpit a second, a third time,
etcetera, and each time the orchestra
entered at the conclusion of his words.
Haydn’s The Seven Last
Words of Our Savior on
the Cross was performed
for the first time in Cádiz
on Good Friday 1787.
The music Haydn wrote
for Cádiz is a sequence
of seven sonatas with an
introduction, each of them
a slow movement, and to
conclude, a furious outburst of music to represent
the earthquake mentioned
in Saint Matthew, 27: 51.
An expanse of eight slow
Interior of the upper chapel of the Oratorio of Santa Cueva in
movements in a row is
Cadíz, Spain, decorated with frescos by Francisco Goya and a
unprecedented in the
cupola painted by Antonio Cavallini. Photo by Daniel García-Parra
history of music, and even
a composer as creative and ingenious as
by instrumental music,” Haydn said at the
Haydn would never have devised such
time, “but in such a way as to awaken the
a scheme had he not known that the
deepest feelings within the soul even of
music would be interspersed with spothe most inexperienced.”
ken reflections—that is, with music and
Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Our
words alternatSavior on the Cross is one of the great
ing throughout.
monuments of sacred music. Haydn himThe movements
self was so devoted to it that, after origithemselves,
nally writing the score for full orchestra,
despite all of
he immediately made a version for string
them being in
quartet. And then, after he heard an
a slow tempo,
unauthorized choral arrangement, he
are remarkably
decided to rewrite the score himself for
varied in terms
four-part chorus. (He also approved a
of key, rhythm,
version for piano that his publisher cominstrumentamissioned.) In these various forms, his
tion, and general
music gained widespread popularity over
José Antonio Sáenz de
expression.
the years, in the way that great religious
Santa María, Marquis
(Haydn even
paintings, widely disseminated in copies
of Valde-Íñigo, who
commissioned Haydn’s
varies the pace
and reproductions, are often known and
Seven Last Words
of each sonata
treasured throughout the world. ever so slightly,
as a fresco painter, working in one of
the great cathedrals, would use various
shades of a single color.) “Each of the
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
texts is represented and expressed purely