My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Seven Musical Settings of Jesus' Cry from the Cross
At our Wednesday evening Lenten services, my church has been studying the seven last words of Jesus on the cross. This has made me think about all the many different musical settings of these words, and how interesting and edifying it is to compare them. So with that in mind, today I am going to share with you seven settings of Jesus’ fourth word from the cross: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani, or My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
When Jesus says these words from the cross, he is of course praying the opening of the 22nd Psalm. Thus, when Mendelssohn writes his musical setting of Psalm 22, he has a solo tenor voice sing the opening line, echoing Jesus’ lonely and forsaken cry from the cross. For the rest of the psalm, Mendelssohn continues to have the choir and the soloist take turns, going back and forth, never letting us get so lost in the choral harmonies that we forget that this psalm is the psalm of Jesus on the cross, as we continue to hear his voice cry out on its own.
Haydn’s string quartet, The Seven Last Words of Christ, were originally written just for instruments, with no vocal line. Later he worked them into an oratorio with the text sung, but even the original instrumental parts seem to sing out the words they are trying to convey. Sonata IV (34:49 on the video) in this work gives us the words of Jesus in Latin: “Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquisti me.” It is a slow setting, as are all the sonatas in this work. Despite being written in F minor, you’ll hear that this piece sounds almost cheery at times. There is a rough insistence in the opening violin melody, crying out with a loud voice. The middle section, however, is light and almost happy. Haydn refuses to dwell in the sadness and darkness of the day, but has to give us a reminder, even in this profound moment, that Jesus’ suffering and death has brought us endless joy.
James MacMillan also wrote settings of the Seven Last Words From the Cross, but they are about as different as can be from Haydn’s. His setting of Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani (20:04 in the video) begins low and growly, with a low bass slowly and quietly singing the words. The piece gets louder and higher, until we have a halo of high strings encircling the high sopranos singing the text, and then we have a wild, melismatic, polyphonic whirlpool until we descend back down to the low and dark depths. Whereas Haydn’s work sounds very fixed and enclosed, the strings and chanting voices in MacMillan’s setting make it sound like we are on the edge of a great, empty expanse of nothingness.
Heinrich Schütz is less well known today, but he was one of the greatest Baroque composers of his day, and another great composer that we Lutherans can claim as our own. His setting of The Seven Last Words is beautiful. Starting at 11:17 in the video above, you can hear his setting of our text. Instead of having one voice sing the evangelist part, he has a choir sing that text in polyphony, which draws even more attention to the solo voice of Jesus when he sings out these words. And the beautiful echoing strings add to this stunning and memorable setting. It is short, and when you hear it once you want to go back immediately and listen again.
Antonín Tučapský, a modern Czech composer, also wrote a setting of these words of Jesus in his collection of 5 Lenten Motets. While he is a modern composer using modern harmonies, this piece is very accessible to the ear. It has force, and yet seems to float through the air, and the dissonances work well with the text. It is above all contemplative, and seems to linger in the air after the final note.
In the Baroque period, it was quite common to write Passion settings, and one of the most famous texts for these passions was The Brockes Passion, named after the librettist Barthold Heinrich Brockes, which takes its text from all four Gospels. Many famous composers of the time wrote settings of this text, including Handel. Handel’s Passion setting influenced Bach’s own setting in the St. John’s Passion, and while it is not nearly as well known today, it is still well worth listening to. You can hear his setting of Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani at 2:02:41 in the video. Notice how he uses the same melody for the Aramaic words as he does for the words in German. You will see this pattern repeat in Bach’s Passion setting. In Handel’s setting the melody comes and goes quickly. It is over in a matter of seconds and doesn’t linger in the mind. Thus, while I do admire his Brockes Passion setting, these words of Jesus do not stand out in the setting for me.
Of course, I am saving the best setting for last. These words of Jesus do not appear in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion until 2 hours and 20 minutes in. They’re a long time in coming, and they go by quickly. However, you will never hear a more haunting setting of these words than Bach gives them here. Like Handel does above, Bach gives the Aramaic and the German the same melody, and the melody is so striking and powerful that you only need those two repetitions for it to be lodged in your head. It is dramatically perfect. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion setting is famous for the “halo of strings” that plays behind all of Jesus’ words, except at this one moment of abandonment on the cross, wherein even the halo drops out and only the keyboard remains. It is incredible to me that Bach can infuse so much beauty and care into such a small two minutes during a piece that lasts well over two hours, to the point that I remember this short melody every time I hear the reading in church.
As you can see, composers have taken these words of Jesus and turned them into wildly different pieces, and there are plenty more than this if you care to look them up. Just as you can get more out of reading the passion account every time you do it, so can these composers find new ways of setting it, each their own.