The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross was premièred in Cadiz, a city at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
It was commissioned by a confraternity called the Hermandad de la Santa Cueva at the end of the 18th century. At this time, Cadiz was a prosperous and cosmopolitan city and Haydn was famous all over Europe.
For his second recording of this masterpiece, Jordi Savall has decided to play not only on period instruments, but also in a 'period place', the Santa Cueva Church, in which the première took place in 1786. Moreover, Jordi Savall has commissioned two texts from the theologist Raimon Panikkar and the writer José Saramago (Nobel Prize for Literature 1998). Returning to the original context for which Haydn's work was written, he thought it fitting to invite two great masters of spiritual and humanistic thought of our own day to complement the brief Biblical quotations with a series of texts and commentaries which reflect their profound spiritual and humanistic convictions. Follow that!
