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.

Jésus tombe à terre pour la deuxième fois

There are inevitably some musical commonalities between this second fall and the first (movement III). The same moderato assai marking and an opening figure that is a clear reference back to the previous fall. Where the first fall focussed on the weight of the cross, however, this second fall is a meditation on the relentlessness of the journey to Calvary. This may be where we hear the violence of the soldiers driving their prisoner; there is a sense of perpetual motion, almost all of that movement expressed in falling pitches. The final phrases, low in both pitch and dynamic, are almost a musical image of blood pounding in the ears of one both hurt and exhausted. We recognise here the full humanity of the incarnate on his way towards the depths of possibly human suffering; and yet we see this with the eyes of faith, as something happening to the full divinity of Christ.

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