Haydn: The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (Orchestral version, 1786)

"A canon from Cádiz asked me to compose an instrumental piece about the seven last words of our Saviour on the Cross. At that time it was customary to perform an oratory in the Cathedral of Cádiz every year during Lent. After a suitable prelude, the bishop climbed into his chair, spoke one of the seven words and commented on it. Then he descended again and stood in front of it: this time span was filled with music. And so the bishop climbed the chair a second time, a third time and so on, and the orchestra played each time at the end of the sermon. In my work I had to take this circumstance into account. The task was to write seven successive Adagi, each about ten minutes long, without the listener being monotonous, and it was no easy task." Joseph Haydn

The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross was premièred in Cadiz, a city at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

It was commissioned by a confraternity called the Hermandad de la Santa Cueva at the end of the 18th century. At this time, Cadiz was a prosperous and cosmopolitan city and Haydn was famous all over Europe.

For his second recording of this masterpiece, Jordi Savall has decided to play not only on period instruments, but also in a 'period place', the Santa Cueva Church, in which the première took place in 1786. Moreover, Jordi Savall has commissioned two texts from the theologist Raimon Panikkar and the writer José Saramago (Nobel Prize for Literature 1998). Returning to the original context for which Haydn's work was written, he thought it fitting to invite two great masters of spiritual and humanistic thought of our own day to complement the brief Biblical quotations with a series of texts and commentaries which reflect their profound spiritual and humanistic convictions. Follow that!