... but you really have to listen
to a recording of Joseph Hadyn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ.
You didn’t know Papa Haydn wrote
serious stuff, did you? Except maybe for his Creation (which is still
perhaps a bit too “pretty” to be altogether serious—angels singing lines like “With
verdure clad the fields appear”? I ask you!), and maybe his Nelson
Mass. Well, The Seven Last Words of Christ is different.
Haydn wrote several versions of the
piece, the first being an orchestral work commissioned for a 1783 Good Friday
service. In 1787 Haydn produced a
version for string quartet; finally, almost twenty years later in 1789, he
turned out an oratorio. It’s the oratorio
that you’ll find below, in a version conducted by Harnoncourt (all apologies
for the ads).
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