This year, our Good Friday service is based on the Seven Last Words (or statements) of Jesus on the cross. Throughout history, composers of church music have set these words and the surrounding scripture text. One of my favorite settings is by Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), a German composer whose life circumstances feel particularly resonant to our own this year. Schütz lived in an era when plagues appeared frequently throughout Europe. Some of the most important places in his life (Weissenfels, his hometown; Venice, where he studied; Dresden, where he was court composer) were ravaged by plagues during or shortly before his lifetime.
At the beginning of our Good Friday service, I’ll play the opening movement of Schütz’s Die sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz on the piano, but for the rest of the service, you won’t hear his music directly. Instead, I’ve asked several musicians to listen to a portion of his piece and respond with their own improvisation – picking up textures, harmonies, or melodic fragments from Schütz’s writing but also leaving space for their own reaction to the corresponding passage of scripture. You won’t need to be familiar with Schütz’s work to appreciate these musical offerings, but if you’d like to listen to it for some more context, check out the recording below.
City Church artist Melissa Choi has designed special lighting effects for the Good Friday music contributions (and for the Easter music! Stay tuned!), and Isaac Lin is providing drawings to help us in this reflective service. We’re looking forward to sharing this with all of you on Friday evening.
- Bethany Danel Brooks, Music Director