The music and liturgies of Holy Week are what I look forward to every year. As a professional church musician, I spend time each year carefully curating hymns and choral music for each spot. And now, it seems like none of it will happen. We need liturgical music in our lives, though, and I’d like to offer this as a way of walking with Christ through his Passion this Holy Week: an aural passion, if you will. 

The Seven Last Words of Christ have been used devotionally since at least the 16th century, and many musical compositions have been written using them as inspiration. James MacMillan’s setting, scored for choir and strings, runs the gamut from tenderness to terror, and it is one of the most moving pieces I have ever heard. 

MacMillan is a composer of great Christian faith, and that faith informs all of his writing, whether sacred or secular. His music runs the gamut from beautiful serenity to terror and panic. It gives us space for all the emotions in our life right now, for all of those emotions are present in the Passion of Jesus.  

For listening to accompany this guide, I recommend the recording by the Spiritus Chamber Choir (Timothy Shantz, conductor), available on Spotify.  

I. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do(Luke 23:34) 

The strings set a tone of steady, placid calm, sustaining a single note. An ascending line is sung: “Father forgive them.” This repeats, and more voices are added to the texture, increasing the tension. Lower voices join in with rapid-fire patter: Hosanna filio David! Echoes of this eager Palm Sunday acclamation are still audible from the cross. They knew not what they did at the triumphal entry, and they know not what they do at Golgotha. And still, we know not what we do—when we acclaim power and subjugate Christ to an oversimplified principle of general love. As the upper voices continue to stretch higher and higher (but never strident) in their plea for God’s clemency to their accusers, in the lower voices, the cry of the Palm Sunday chant intensifies, and the strings become more and more chaotic and terrifying in their energy. At a certain point, the cry of Rex Israel completely overtakes the Son’s cry for forgiveness. The King of Israel, announced on Palm Sunday, is now a shabby placard nailed as an afterthought to the cross. As the cries of frantic mob recede, the sopranos recite in a rhythmic monotone (chanting on the same F♯ that began the piece) a portion of the Good Friday Tenebrae responsories: “The life that I held dear I delivered into the hands of the unrighteous and my inheritance has become for me like a lion in the forest. My enemy spoke out against me, ‘Come gather together and hasten to devour him.’ ” 

II. Woman behold thy son! … Behold thy mother. (John 19:26-27) 

The opening choral statement is straightforward, declamatory, authoritative, and completely tonal. The strings begin simply by echoing but then build in rhythmic intensity, weaving a series of anguished rhythmic motives. All the while, the choral statement continues: developing, becoming increasingly dissonant. How does our vision change as we continue to behold? We move beyond merely seeing to truly grasp—beholding—what Christ is showing us: the changing of human relationships, providence, the reality of grief and loss. Once the strings have reached a climax of wailing, they quickly fall away, and the lower voices state in an unadorned manner, “Behold thy mother.” The strings soon fade away into figures that can only be heard as sighs too deep for words.  

III. Verily, I say unto you, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43) 

In the Good Friday liturgy, there is a traditional chant that is sung as the wooden cross is brought in for veneration—Ecce lignum crucis (Behold the wood of the cross); the response is Venite adoremus (O come let us adore). After the lower voices sing a jagged, splintering, rough-hewn version of Ecce lignum crucis, a solo violin soars above the pain with the melody of the Venite adoremus chant. This is the Christ we are called to adore today—the suffering Christ that takes away our sins. At the third repetition, the strings begin a slow climb, higher and higher, foiled each time but trying again. Each time they reach a higher note which finally melts into the solo violin playing the melody calling us to come and adore. Finally, two high solo sopranos accompanied by two solo violins sing the text of this movement, “Verily, I say unto you, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.” By juxtaposing our response to the Good Friday chant (O come, let us adore) to the aural representation of Christ (Behold the wood of the cross) we can hear Christ’s words as directed not only to the dying thief, but to us as well.  

IV. Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34) 

MacMillan has an uncanny ability to stretch musical tension to the point where you are sure things will fall apart, to the point where you can no longer stand any more. The tension then doesn’t abate, but settles into a different mode. What a profound musical commentary on the words of the Son to the Father, quoting Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Beginning with the lowest voices surrounded by a halo of low strings, the statement rises, always two voices at a time, the lowest fading out while the next highest joins in. The vocal writing consists of long, sinewy tones decorated by what might be heard as ululation or other vocal adornments characteristic of Middle Eastern musical styles. As with many of these Seven Last Words, this piece makes us explore the thought that Christ did not utter these words just once, but repeated them in panic, fear, and desperation. The repetition gives us a different insight into each statement. Can the Father forsake the Son? No, but in Christ’s passion, rational thought is overridden by pain-fueled terror. So too in our anxieties, great and small, God has not forsaken us no matter what our worst fears tell us.  

V. I thirst (John 19:28) 

Pure, stark, sounds: the interval of an open fifth sung against the otherworldly string harmonics. A pythagorean, elemental interval. Deep, human, elemental need—thirst. Fast chanting voices, perhaps a remembered echo, singing, “I gave you saving water from the rock.” The irony of this situation is reflected in the string tremolandos-—buzzing, sawing, roaring. The irony is repeated, even whispered: “I gave you water from the rock.” Out of these painful reminders of what God has done for us, the voice of Christ is heard softly; “I thirst.” This rapidly grows into a terrifying cry. More reminders, as the cry subsides, and then the punchline: “...but you gave me gall and vinegar to drink.” The strings then have their own quick crescendo from the softest possible sound to a violent shudder that dissipates into nothing.  

VI. It is finished (John 19:30) 

Stabbing sounds from the strings; perhaps they are the twitching of exhausted muscle fibers, the uncontrollable shudder of a sob. This music is pure violence. After this arresting beginning, the strings fade to a humming from the choir, and the sopranos sing, “My eyes were blind with weeping, for he that consoled me is far from me; consider all you people, is there any sorrow like my sorrow?” Under that, the choir repeats, steadily, “It is finished.” The music here is tender: a cappella, almost like a chorale. As the question, “Is there any sorrow like my sorrow” is repeated, the sounds of violent string once again interrupts. We are torn from a pure moment of contemplation into the real terror of the cross.  

VII. Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit (Luke 23:46) 

Two long, dissonant choral exclamations, grounded by the lowest strings: “Father!” As the statement continues, the sounds decrease in volume and pitch; as if all the strength was used up in the opening cry. Next, the two violins toss a jagged, sinewy melody back and forth. Who are these voices? Perhaps Mary and John at the foot of the cross. Perhaps they are the residual sounds of the scene at Golgotha. Soft, extremely high-pitched string music follows: not calming, but not violent. Not comforting, but not unsettling. Just there. For the last few seconds of this aural passion, we hear two dissonant notes at the very top of the musical range. They repeat, growing shorter and softer, until there is silence. All we can do is fade away ourselves, out of our own heads, and into a place of sharing in Christ’s Passion.  

In a 2019 interview with National Review’s Madeleine Kearns, James MacMillan had this to say about silence: “...music is all about noise, as you know. It’s all about sound. Hearing. The manipulation of sounds on the page and how it comes off the page and into the ether—off the page and into the air, physically. And then to somebody else’s ears and into their bodies. It’s a very physical and visceral thing. But composers throughout the generations have known that music begins in silence. Again, there’s an umbilical link between silence and music. It’s in the silence of our own thoughts and feelings that the beginnings of music germinate. And, therefore, there’s a great respect that composers have for silence. And a great dwelling on it, and a great reflection on it.” 

Listen to the Passion of Christ, and the saving gift of silence with which it ends.