Haydn’s Seven Last Words – Crucifixion of the Earth
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
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Don José Marcos Ignacio Sáenz de Santa María y Sáenz-Rico
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Haydn’s Seven Last Words – Crucifixion of the Earth
Orpheum Annex 823 Seymour Street, 2nd floor
In 1785 Josef Haydn
wrote a chamber work based on the Biblical seven last words spoken by Christ on
the cross. Traditionally, the words or phrases are spoken, followed by a
meditation on those words, then by the music. EMV, in collaboration with Green
College at UBC, have invited renowned BC poets Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky
to prepare poetry for each of the seven movements that stimulates a dialogue
based on the universal human qualities in the text and also in Haydn’s deeply
affecting music.
The above is all you need to know about this wonderful
concert and I could leave it at that. But if you are slightly curious the
events, ancillary and direct that led Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) to write the
piece are most interesting and curious.
I have always found it fascinating to know that Haydn was
a gifted soprano singer who because of his talent ended up as a boy-singer in the choir at St. Stephen’s in Vienna. George van Reutter the cathedral’s musical director
had received a complaint from Empress Maria Theresa that Haydn, now 17, was
losing his ability to sing the high notes. Van Reutter called in Mathias Haydn,
Joseph’s father, and amateur harpist, and suggested that a surgical solution could save
his son’s singing career. We can be thankful to Papa (the real Papa) Haydn that
his son’s nether parts were kept intact and somehow they equipped the man to
become a great composer.
We must go back to March 1519 when Hernán Cortés Monroy
Pizarro Altamirano founded the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz in thanks for having
arrived unscathed from battles with the local natives on Good Friday. To make
sure his troops stayed Cortés burned the ships. From there he moved inland to Tenochtitlan and New Spain was eventually called Mexico.
Don José Marcos Ignacio Sáenz de Santa María y Sáenz-Rico
a priest ordained in 1738 had been born April 25, 1738 in what was then called
the New City of Vera Cruz. His father, Pedro Sáenz de Santa María y Sáenz de
Almarza was an important businessman. In 1785 the priest’s father died and
subsequently the businessman’s eldest son who was a marquis. This is how our
priest (most important later on in dealing with Joseph Haydn) became, by
inheritance a noble priest.
Around 1730 in Cádiz, Spain, there was a semi-secret
religious group of saintly men (a cofradía) who met once a week in an
unfashionable and probable zone of ill repute to discuss spiritual matters. The
Bishop of Cádiz went in mufti to check them out. Seeing that all was in order
(perhaps the men had been warned in advance) the bishop told them to continue
their laudable indeavour but that they should do it not in a house but in a
church. The place they found was called La Auxiliar del Rosario, a modest
oratorio of the 16th century. The men then called themselves la
Cofradía de la Madre Antigua. In 1756 they began repair work to spruce up the
old oratorio. The oxen which were carrying out the construction debris sank in
a hole on San Francisco Street. They found an underground cavern.
Now the year before there had been a catastrophic
earthquake in Lisbon (read Voltaire’s Candide) which brought 30 meter tidal
waves to Cádiz. It was suspected that was the reason for the hidden cavern. The
Diario de Cádiz (newspaper) in 2004 asserted via the archaeologist Inmaculada
Pérez that the cavern at one time had been the Phoenician temple to Astarte.
Some say that Western Europe's oldest continuously occupied city is Cádiz. It was founded by Phoenicians who called it Gadir or Agadir.
Our noble priest Don José was assigned to be the
spiritual leader of the Cofradía in 1771. He had inherited a fortune from his
brother and nephew so by 1781 he decided to improve the cavern chapel which was now
called Oratorio de la Santa Cueva (cave) but today is called La Iglesia del Rosario.
Don José had a friend who was an avid art collector. He was Don Sebastián Martínez Pérez.
He was a personal friend of Goya. Don Sebastián was also a doctor so
Goya came to Cádiz for treatment. There is a portrait of Don Sebastián by Goya
at the Metropolitan in New York City. Don José commissioned Goya to paint three
works, The Parable of the Wedding, a Last Supper and the Miracle of the Loaves
and the Fishes.
Cádiz is at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and higher up
is the city of Seville famous for its Holy Week ceremonies. Cádiz had the
tradition of holding a three hour long reading of Christ’s Last Seven Words on
Good Friday. Between the words there were sermons so that it all lasted three
hours. Don José through his his musician friends Marquis Méritos and Marquis
Ureña contacted Haydn who was the fashionable composer of the time in Spain to
write a musical work for the ceremony.
Haydn himself explained the origin and difficulty of
writing the work when the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel issued (in 1801) a
new edition and requested a preface:
The work, called “Las siete últimas palabras de nuestro Salvador en la cruz” was finished in the winter of 1786 and was inaugurated in Vienna March 26, 1787 and in Cádiz on Good Friday April 14 of the same year. One of the instruments used was a Stradivarius cello made in 1720 and presently owned by Mexican collector Carlos Prieto. Don José paid Haydn in a most unusual way - sending him a cake in which Haydn discovered was filled with gold coins
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) who was born in Cádiz said that as a young boy he attended a performance of the Haydn work and that it helped inspire him into his career in music.
Some fifteen years ago I was requested by a canon of
Cádiz to compose instrumental music on the Seven Last Words of Our Savior On
the Cross. It was customary at the Cathedral of Cádiz to produce an oratorio
every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little
enhanced by the following circumstances. 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 work, called “Las siete últimas palabras de nuestro Salvador en la cruz” was finished in the winter of 1786 and was inaugurated in Vienna March 26, 1787 and in Cádiz on Good Friday April 14 of the same year. One of the instruments used was a Stradivarius cello made in 1720 and presently owned by Mexican collector Carlos Prieto. Don José paid Haydn in a most unusual way - sending him a cake in which Haydn discovered was filled with gold coins
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) who was born in Cádiz said that as a young boy he attended a performance of the Haydn work and that it helped inspire him into his career in music.
In Spanish these are the last 7 words:
2.
En
verdad te digo que hoy estarás conmigo en el paraíso. (Lucas 23, 43)
3.
Mujer,
ahí tienes tu hijo, y al discípulo Juan: Ahí tienes a tu madre (Juan 19, 26-27)
4.
Dios
mío, Dios mío, ¿Porqué me has desamparado? (Mateo 27, 46)
5.
Tengo
sed (Juan 19, 28)
6.
Todo
está cumplido (Juan 19, 30)
7.
Padre,
en tus manos encomiendo mi espíritu (Lucas 23, 46)
Those Spanish words are familiar to me. Since I could remember, when I was five (1946) my grandmother and mother would call me around 1pm from playing outside in the garden on Good Friday. On this day we did not turn on our radio to listen to music. My mother and I would kneel and my grandmother María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena would read the above words to us. We stopped the Good Friday prayers around 1952.
In the beginning of the 60s my mother, my grandmother and I moved to in Veracruz. We lived on Calle Martín Alonso Pinzón. Martín Alonzo was the captain of La Pinta, Columbus's second caravel on his first voyage of discovery.
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| Alex with María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena |
In 1800 Lord Nelson and his mistress Emma Hamilton
stopped in Vienna on their way (overland) from Naples. They were invited to
visit the Prince and Princess Esterhazy. They were feted and served by 100
grenadiers (all 6 ft tall or taller) and they heard a performance of Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis, henceforth dubbed
the Nelson Mass. Haydn and Nelson
exchanged gifts, the pocket watch Nelson used during the Battle of the Nile and
Haydn’s quill with which he wrote the Miss ain Angustiis. Emma Hamilton, who
was a fine soprano, sang a Haydn choral work.
In the kind of connections (some might say blurry) that I adore I would like to finish here with these facts. Don José, our rich marquis was born in Veracruz. General George Meade who defeated Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg was born in Cádiz. During the 20-day siege of the Battle of Veracruz from March 9 to March 1847 in what came to be known as the Mexican/American War, a young engineer, Captain Robert E. Lee found a way around the city which prevented the city from being demolished in what was the United States’s first amphibious landing.
The battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, within sight of
Cabo Trafalgar, meant that the Spaniards in Cádiz would have been witness to
Nelson’s decisive victory.
Traditionally the last of the 7 words are from Luke 23:46. But Haydn chose Matthew 27:51ff. for an eighth movement (plus one more as introduction for a total of nine movements). Why? I have my suspicions but I will not elaborate.
That last movement is labeled by Haydn:
Il terremoto (Earthquake) in C minor – Presto e con tutta la forza.
Here is the Mathew 27:51ff from my father's King James Bible:
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened ; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.
When I listen to this last movement I will also imagine oxen falling into a hole on San Francisco Street in Cádiz.
Below is the illustration being used by Early Music Vancouver to promote Saturday's concert. Early Music Vancouver Artistic Director Matthew White saw in my rose scans (roses from my garden scanned on my Epson Perfection V700 Photo) good uses for illustrating the programs and calendar of EMV. He asked me what we could possibly do for Haydn's Seven Last Words – Crucifixion of the Earth. We walked around the garden to my very large and sprawling Rosa 'Albertine' which had finished blooming. It blooms profusely but only once. I pointed at the thorns. "These brutal thorns (some of the most vicious of all roses) represent the suffering and crucifixion of our Lord. The emerging young shoot is His resurrection." And that was that.
Below is the illustration being used by Early Music Vancouver to promote Saturday's concert. Early Music Vancouver Artistic Director Matthew White saw in my rose scans (roses from my garden scanned on my Epson Perfection V700 Photo) good uses for illustrating the programs and calendar of EMV. He asked me what we could possibly do for Haydn's Seven Last Words – Crucifixion of the Earth. We walked around the garden to my very large and sprawling Rosa 'Albertine' which had finished blooming. It blooms profusely but only once. I pointed at the thorns. "These brutal thorns (some of the most vicious of all roses) represent the suffering and crucifixion of our Lord. The emerging young shoot is His resurrection." And that was that.
