MacMillan's "Seven Last Words" Beyond Words

James MacMillan

Commissioned by BBC Television and premiered over seven nights during Holy Week in 1994, it is seven harrowing scenes, unsparing in detail and totally compelling.  As performed by the VAE and CCO, led by VAE music director Donald Nally, it was music that touched the core of one’s being.

The program itself had a time line, beginning with Johannes Brahms’ “Nänie” (“Lament”), based on an ode by Schiller dealing with Greek myths about the death of beauty too soon.  Danish composer Bo Holten’s 1976 “Tallis Variations” on a Lament by Thomas Tallis compares and contrasts early and modern music, while Englishman John Tavener’s 1999 “The Bridegroom,” treating the biblical allegory of the wise and foolish virgins, represents so-called “mystical minimalism.”

It was the annual collaboration by the VAE and CCO and the Chapel was full.  Acoustically, it was about as much as the venue could handle, with the 35-piece CCO, including brasses for the Brahms (strings only for the other three works), and 12-24 singers.  Consequently, the smaller and less polyphonic works fared best, and when they did, the effect was lovely, especially in Summit’s Gothic Chapel, with its elaborately carved altar and handsome stained glass windows.

After Brahms’ romantic lament “Nänie,” where Eurydice sinks back into Hades and Adonis and Achilles meet premature deaths, Holten’s “Tallis Variations” came as a surprise.  The CCO strings, comprising a double string quartet and double bass, spoke in the complex, atonal language of the modern period. The VAE sang in wordless modal harmonies, creating an effect reminiscent of Arvo Pärt.   It was like voices echoing through the halls of time.  Lines intertwined and the instruments and voices reached out to one other, but at the end the chorus remained aloof.

Tavener, an English composer steeped in the music of the Russian Orthodox liturgy, set “The Bridegroom” (1999) for a dozen women’s voices and strings (without double bass).  The voices represent the people of the world.  The strings represent Christ, the Bridegroom who waits to welcome them into his kingdom.  The effect was anxious, with selective vibrato by the strings, modal harmonies and considerable alternation by the two groups, as if in dialogue.

Scotsman MacMillan’s “Seven Last Words” followed intermission, and there were probably few people in the audience prepared for it.  It is laced with all kinds of music deployed for dramatic effect:   Bach, chant, Scottish music, even what sounds like the shrieking strings of Bernard Hermann’s “Psycho.”

It began quietly, with a rising four-note lament repeated over and over creating a sober, ostinato effect.  The first “word,” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” was sounded quietly by the sopranos, after which there was babble.  MacMillan, a devout Roman Catholic, inserted words from the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem, not joyous "Hosannas," but hard, loud, grating ones.   The movement ended with the women chanting one of the Good Friday Responsaries for Tenebrae (“shadows,” a special service for Holy Week).  The effect was stark and deeply mournful.

“Woman, behold thy son,” sung fortissimo by the full chorus, shattered the quiet in the manner of Bach’s Passions.  The first repetitions were followed by stony silence, then repeated throughout the movement as the orchestra grew frantic and filled with turmoil.  String glissandi (slides) and snap pizzicato by the basses punctuated the end, where there is a single statement of “Behold thy mother.”

“Verily, I say unto you today thou shalt be with me in Paradise” had some of the most transcendent music this side of Olivier Messiaen.  As if from the depths, the basses intoned the Good Friday versicle “Ecce lignum crucis” (“Behold the wood of the cross”).  The response (“Venite adoremus”) was accompanied by viola arpeggios and a high, sweet violin solo (CCO concertmaster Anna Reider) that wove its way throughout the movement like a silver thread.

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani” began in black, inky tones in the basses, growing shrill and strident as everyone joined in.  At the end, it all sank back into the abyss.

“I thirst” was stark and spare, a declaration of unfathomable suffering, with loud whispers by the men and tremolo strings.  The dissonant hammer chords that opened “It is finished” (compare Hermann's “Psycho”) conjured nails cutting into flesh as the lament from the first movement returned, and the chorus sang another Good Friday Responsory (“My eyes were blind with weeping”).

 Almost without a break, there were three loud exclamations of “Father,” followed by “into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  Then, in what is perhaps the most extraordinary moment of the cantata, the chorus dropped out.  The instruments followed alone, with a long lamentation that thinned out gradually to a pair of violins sounding a soft, halting minor second, like a last breath.

 It was the VAE’s final concert of the season.  The CCO, led by music director Mischa Santora, closes its season June 6 in Corbett Auditorium at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with music of George Gershwin featuring pianist Michael Chertock and Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night.”