Seven Last Words

Greyfriars Kirk, 12/4/2025

SCO Chorus, SCO Strings, Gregory Batsleer conductor

Greyfriars Kirk is full for tonight’s SCO Chorus’s concert with the SCO String Ensemble, in a concert spanning nearly half a millennium of British music, featuring James MacMillan’s 1993 work ‘Seven Last Words from the Cross’, William Byrd’s 1591 ‘Ne irascaris, Domine’ and Daniel Kidane’s 2020 ‘Be Still’. Conductor, Gregory Batsleer, retains his practice from the Chorus’s Christmas concerts of moving between the works without pausing for applause. This gives the audience a chance to reflect on the themes, narrative, symbolic and musical, which are explored across the whole programme.

Two of the composers are, we know, Catholic, both MacMillan and Byrd making known their adherence to the religion when it might have been politic not to do so. William Byrd, born in 1540, lived a long life, which included periods of Catholic repression and executions, and, as David Kettle says in the programme, “trod a dangerous high-wire, his unwavering loyalty to Catholicism apparently overlooked because of his high status as a musician and because of his friendly and respectful relations with the royal court, not least Elizabeth herself”. It was expected in that period that a composer of Byrd’s eminence would write religious music, in his case, music for public Protestant services as well as the probably secret, or coded, Catholic works, of which tonight’s two part motet is one. In modern day Scotland, according to the last census, now a majority secular society, the 65 year-old Macmillan knew all about the open sectarian divides of his youth in the West of Scotland.  Most of his music is secular, but he has consistently called upon religious themes for his choral writing.  This year alone, the RSNO has performed his 2011 ‘Since it Was the Day of Preparation’ and his 2019 ‘Christmas Oratorio’.  Tonight’s work was written before either of these as a commission from the BBC in 1994, when it was screened in seven nightly episodes during Holy Week.

Byrd’s unaccompanied double motet is a glorious opening to the concert, its rich polyphony sung with precision and warmth by the chorus.  Its text from Isaiah is an Old Testament prophecy, begging God not to be angry and to restore his people to their home, Sion or Jerusalem. David Kettle plausibly suggests that these words had a personal significance for the composer, who believed Catholics were desolate and forgotten in  Protestant England. The numerous repetitions of ‘Sion deserto facta es’ and ‘Jerusalem desolata est’ build up the sense of separation and loss, and the modern, as well as historic resonances of displaced and refugee populations remain with the listeners.

The 39 year old London-born composer, Daniel Kildane wrote ‘Be Still’ in lockdown and its first performance was in February 2021 in an online concert given by the Manchester Camerata conducted by Pekka Kuusisto.  The 10 minute instrumental work features a  glittering string sound, played with rapid vibrato and trills which move in and out of harmonies and dissonances.  Occasional very high sounds come from crotales (antique cymbals) which are played with a bow and add to the unsettling atmosphere.  In his notes, Daniel Kildane refers to TS Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’, “If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable”, and he says that when looking back to lockdown, “events slither from my grasp – like clouds passing by in the sky.”  We carry from this secular work ideas of rootlessness, and uneasiness conveyed through the musical repetitions of high notes.

Christ’s last words from the cross – his seven last utterances – have been assembled from references in the four gospels, principally those of John, reputedly a witness to the crucifixion, and of Luke, the Greek physician who, tradition has it, knew Mary, Christ’s mother.  The brief texts have inspired instrumental and choral works, including those by Joseph Haydn, Pergolesi and Gounod.  MacMillan has written short notes on each of the sections, making clear his reliance on ‘Tuireadh’ his clarinet quintet using traditional lament music, and on the chorales from Bach’s Passions.  ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’, is the first text, and after its introduction in women’s voices, other material from the Palm Sunday Exclamation and the Good Friday Tenebrae  expand on the idea of Christ’s enemies and his isolation.  The men’s voices, accompanied by busy violins, rapidly sing the Hosannas which greeted Christ in Jerusalem a few days earlier until they are overridden by the plainsong-inspired women’s chorus repeating Christ’s fears when “they placed me in a wasteland of desolation” – words similar to Byrd’s text from Isaiah at the end of his motet.

Section 2 uses only John’s gospel words “Woman behold thy Son…Behold thy Mother”, with repetitions of the first four words taking up most of its five minute length. Initially the  unaccompanied choir sings together with certainty, then troubled instrumental music intervenes and the choir sings the response less often as the strings become more frantic. Eventually accompanied by pizzicato and percussive effects on the double basses, the choir, as if “exhausted” Macmillan says, sing ‘Behold thy mother’.  It’s interesting that this intimate passage from the gospel when Christ commended his disciple John to the care of his own mother is dramatized in this way: it suggests a wider sense of belonging and caring.

Section 3 ‘Verily I say unto you today thou wilt be with me in Paradise’ is at eight minutes the longest section. It begins with four repeats of ‘’Ecce lignum’’ (Behold  the wood) from the Good Friday service beginning with the lowest bass voices (at the upper right of the choir) and ending with the highest female voices at the bottom left.  High violins playing the work’s most beautiful melody accompany the lines ‘Venite adoremus’, a more elaborate setting with each repeat.  The choristers singing at the extremes of their range and the decorated notes of the tenors and altos reminded me of the Grechaninov ‘Passion Week’ which the Festival Chorus sang last August: it also highlighted the forgiveness of the good thief whom Christ promises to see ‘in Paradise’.

Christ’s cry of despair ‘Eli Eli lama sabachtani’ (My God, my God why have you forsaken me?) also begins with low voices, this time accompanied by low strings which rise in pitch and volume until the combination of strange harmonies and high ululations becomes almost unbearable. Section 6, ‘I thirst’ repeats Christ’s complaint starkly with the men’s rapid whispering suggesting dry rattling wood or grass set against water-dropping effects in the orchestration. 

The violent orchestral introduction to the sixth section ‘It is finished’ is overtaken by women’s voices singing another response from the Good Friday Tenebrae,  “Consider if there is any sorrow like mine”. Three prolonged cries of ‘Father’ begin the last movement but during “into my hands I commend my Spirit’ the voices fade, the choir sits down and the orchestra plays on,  sometimes tentatively, sometimes using Scots fiddle motifs and with frequent explorations of phrases on high notes, until these also falter and fade away.

James MacMillan has said, “In this final movement, with its long instrumental postlude, the liturgical detachment breaks down and gives way to a more personal reflection.” Gregory Batsleer, with the SCO Chorus and SCO Strings have given a powerful performance of this work, illuminating the nuances of the text with their absolute command of MacMillan’s remarkable music. The choral and orchestral effects were dazzling, yet always drawing the audience back to that personal reflection.