Holy Week is the most sacred time of the year for Christians. It commemorates the dramatic story of Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and his passion, the events that include the last supper, his misery in the Garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal and crucifixion. Not surprisingly, it has inspired composers from the Middle Ages to the present day.
The Christian churches of the East and West still chant special prayers for Holy Week that have roots that date back to the Middle Ages. But during the Renaissance, composers put their own personal mark on settings of lamentations, psalms, the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and other biblical texts. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are cornerstones of Holy Week, and settings by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina are sung by church and concert choirs today.
The Baroque era saw the birth of the passion oratorio, a dramatic musical telling of Jesus’ last days based on the gospels and expanded with additional commentary. These works, too, were traditionally sung during Holy Week. Johann Sebastian Bach perfected the form in his St. Matthew and St. John Passions, but other Baroque composers also wrote passion oratorios. Contemporary composers write settings as well.
There are also significant oratorios recounting the events of Jesus’ passion that are only loosely based on the gospels. Georg Philipp Telemann’s Brockes Passion is a stirring work set to a libretto by the German poet Barthold Brockes. Brockes’ setting was so dominant in 18th century Germany that George Frederick Handel, Reinhard Keiser, Johann Mattheson, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and others composed oratorios using the same text.
Composers have also been inspired by other aspects of the events of Holy Week. Jesus’ sorrows in the garden of Gethsemane were the subject of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives; his suffering as he carried the cross was depicted in Marcel Dupré’s organ work The Stations of the Cross; and Franz Joseph Haydn set Jesus’ Seven Last Words on the Cross in versions for string quartet, keyboard and chamber orchestra. Other figures and events in the drama have also been set to music, most notably Orlande De Lassus’ The Tears of St. Peter, a set of sacred madrigals recounting the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus.
Ultimately, the most touching of all is the simple tableau of a woman weeping over her dead son. Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a Medieval hymn to Mary that has been poignantly set to music by a diverse group of composers, including Josquin Desprez, Gioachino Rossini, Antonin Dvorák, Françis Poulenc, Zoltán Kodaly and many others.
Our featured work is Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion in a new recording with internationally acclaimed Bach specialist Sir John Eliot Gardiner leading The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.
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by Craig Zeichner
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