During the concert featuring the NFM Choir under the artistic direction of Lionel Sow and the NFM Orchestra Leopoldinum under the direction of Joseph Swensen, the monumental work of Joseph Haydn, a Viennese Classicist, will be heard.

The last seven words of Christ refer to the seven sentences uttered by Jesus dying on the cross, collected in the Gospels. These phrases became the focus of considerations not only by theologians, but also the subject of musical settings by composers who had worked before Haydn – including Heinrich Schütz, Christoph Graupner and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.

In 1786, Haydn received information about an order from the distant Cadiz, a city in Spanish Andalusia. The local clergyman, Don José Sáenz de Santa María, wanted to be able to pray and meditate on the “seven words” to the sounds of an instrumental composition during the Good Friday celebrations at the Oratorio de la Santa Cueva. So Haydn composed a work full of dramatic expression, consisting of seven orchestral sonatas preceded by an introduction and ending with a spontaneous finale, which was to symbolize the earthquake after the death of the Savior. The composition was a great international success – soon it was also performed in the cultural capitals of Europe: Vienna, Paris and Berlin. Inspired by the triumph, Haydn developed other variants of the work, focusing mainly on its line-up. One of them – a composition using singers’ voices – was created almost ten years after the original presentation of the piece. Interestingly, it was not Haydn’s original initiative, as the inspiration to compose this version was a setting by the local kapellmeister Joseph Friebert, heard during Haydn’s stay in Passau, Bavaria. Inspired by the original arrangement, the composer decided to create a new version of the work, which will be performed in Wrocław by the ensembles of the National Forum of Music.