Good Friday – Seven Last Words Service – Special Music
Good Friday “Seven Last Words” Service – 4/19 from 12 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Lima, the capital of Perú, also called the “City of the Kings,” was founded in 1535 by Fancisco Pizarro. Pizarro laid the cornerstone of the city’s cathedral, and by 1540, the cathedral had in its employ at least six professional musicians who were the first in a long line of musicians who participated in one of the most fascinating and highly acclaimed ecclesiastical musical traditions in the western world.
The Amerindians of the high Andes, the Incas, took instantly to the music of the Spanish friars sent to evangelize them. The Incas immediately became full participants in this unprecedented transfer of cultural traditions, composing and performing in the styles and traditions of their Franciscan and Jesuit tutors, while adding distinctly South American rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic elements to their work. This collaborative tradition flourished for almost three centuries, but it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the Amerindians assumed significant leadership roles in the churches of Perú. Although several musicians of direct European descent and born in Perú were among the long list of organists or choir masters at Lima’s cathedral, Melchor Tapia was the first mestizo organist/choir director of the famed cathedral.
His St. Luke Passion (1807) is distinctive in its juxtaposition of the evangelist’s narrative of the passion gospel in Gregorian chant with the late-Classical/early Romantic choruses of the crowd. This passion was not composed for concert performance. It is a liturgical work, originally intended to be presented at the time of reading the Gospel in the Roman Catholic Mass on Miercoles Santo, that is, for the Wednesday in Holy Week. The chant is an ancient formula for the recitation of the gospel story and Tapia’s choruses are a perfect reflection of the mixture of cultures and traditions of which he himself was a part.
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Unbeknownst to one another, Phillip Kloeckner, our organist, and David Myford, our leader of the Temple Strings, approached me separately with ideas for Good Friday music last summer and fall. Phillip introduced the Tapia Passion to me, and David said he had always wanted the Temple Strings to play parts of the Haydn Seven Last Words string quartets. As most people know, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809) are the most revered and prolific composers of the Classical Period in the European Western tradition. Selecting a few of their choral masterpieces to be heard alongside the Tapia Passion for our Seven Last Words service and the Haydn string quartets became an easy choice because, though continents and oceans apart in distance, their musical style and time of activity and influence are very close in proximity. Thus all of the music you will experience today is bound together in this manner. Finally, as you will hear the Evangelist sing the ancient chants of our story in the Seventh Word, so too, the Stabat Mater, Mary’s lament at the foot of the cross sung by the section leaders for the Third Word, is one of the most important texts and chant melodies ever composed for Good Friday.
-Phillip Kloeckner and Erik Nussbaum