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 est attaché sur la Croix

The full organ is engaged for the whole movement, in fortissimo more-or-less throughout the piece. The nails are tangible with the pesante and non-legato blows of sound. The violence of the nails is in their volume rather than their harmonic make up: the harm here is real and strong but uncomplicated. A couple of times in the movement a legato line appears, floating above the ongoing thumps of the hammer-blows. Perhaps this line is the pain itself, as experienced by the human-divine subject: the blows continue, but are somehow externalised while the searing pain that follows from the blows cuts through the already-damaged consciousness and becomes the more prominent reality. One is tempted to ask ‘is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’

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