As we journey through Holy Week, the blog is taking a slightly different format with short reflections on Marcel Dupré’s Le chemin de la croix, a musical version of the Stations of the Cross. Instead of one reflection released on Wednesday, these episodes are to appear through the week from Palm Sunday until Good Friday.

Une femme pieuse essuie la face de Jésus

The legend of Veronica does not appear in the Gospels themselves, leaving a level of licence in how any artist portrays the scene. Dupré’s title for the movement indeed ignores the idea of the impressed image, and simply describes a woman wiping Jesus’s face. The music, a slow cantabile, seems to express the tenderness of that act of caring, while a certain sourness of the registration (and some of the intervals) still maintains the pain of the situation: this remains the way of the Cross. The end of the movement switches to an even softer registration and resolving in a rising line towards an F# Major chord to end. Maybe, that altered texture is the miraculous image on her cloth, or maybe the care shown by the woman is the real miracle?

Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi: quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum