The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross

Scoring: Soli SATB, Coro SATB/SATB, [Pfte o Org]

Spoken during his final hours, the “seven words” have been taken as a profound insight into Jesus‘s final suffering on the cross. These words, or rather statements, have been set by numerous composers in different languages.

Charles Gounod’s setting of The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross returns to the Latin text and explicitly recalls the music of Palestrina, but with an added nineteenth-century harmonic twist. The edition of this a cappella work comes with a piano reduction for rehearsal purposes.