Vatican City, Mar 22, 2010 / 12:11 pm
After having heard the rendition of Franz Joseph Haydn's "The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross " last Friday, Pope Benedict XVI called it "an example among the most sublime, in the musical field, of how art and faith can be wedded." The “austere beauty” of the composition was fitting for the solemnity, he observed, adding that it is well adapted to the Lenten season.
The work was performed in honor of the Holy Father's "name day" on the Solemnity of St. Joseph in the intimate setting of the Clementine Room of the Apostolic Palace.
Qualifying the masterpiece as among the "most sublime" in music in being able to unite art and faith, he said that the composition is "all inspired and almost directly from evangelical texts, that culminate in the words pronounced by crucified Jesus, before rendering his final breath."
Haydn's work, he continued, is like Michelangelo's "Pieta" in its ability to transmit an "absolutely original artistic expression" which, at the same time, is in complete service to a moment of faith.