Jorge Grundman, a professor of engineering in Madrid, has a background in both classical and rock music and has stated a desire to build bridges between the classical and popular spheres. The present work, however, displays few connections to popular music beyond its broadly tonal orientation. It has a purely classical model: Haydn's string quartet version of The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, a work that, as Grundman points out, has Spanish roots. Grundman's work has added text from the gospel of St. John (which ...
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Jorge Grundman, a professor of engineering in Madrid, has a background in both classical and rock music and has stated a desire to build bridges between the classical and popular spheres. The present work, however, displays few connections to popular music beyond its broadly tonal orientation. It has a purely classical model: Haydn's string quartet version of The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, a work that, as Grundman points out, has Spanish roots. Grundman's work has added text from the gospel of St. John (which was also done during Haydn's lifetime), sung by a soprano, and it is something like a sequel to the Haydn work, beginning after Christ's crucifixion and subsequent earthquake and ending jubilantly with the resurrection of Christ and the canonical Credo and Hosanna. The effect is unusual, and Grundman deserves credit for avoiding the prevalent models of conservative religious music. The string quartet parts are slow in tempo and draw on the general mood and texture of Haydn's piece...
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