While resting on Christ’s breast on Maundy Thursday, St John the Evangelist hearkened to the rhythm of His quiet and humble Heart, which he would see pierced on the Cross the following day. He noted down every vibration of that Heart, in ink on papyrus as pale as his Master’s martyred body. Pascha crucifixionis is not a Passion play. It is narration alone. John recounts what he saw and heard without emotional expressive tone, in the simple rhythms of Greek as spoken in his day. Christ stands next to him, mostly silent, and Mary listens rather than speaks. The chorus is like an acoustic shadow; its voices do not rend the silent air.

In several passages the Church responds with Latin psalms, creating a kind of counterpoint. Voices from war-torn Jerusalem add simple Hebrew words: “Grief ” – “Man” – “Passage” – “Mother”. Greek, Latin, and Hebrew are the three languages of Christianity, found in Christ’s Passion on the Cross.

There are, however, more languages in this composition. For several months I received recordings of 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 from people all over the world, from Greece to Uzbekistan, Germany, Tanzania, Slovakia, Indonesia, Brazil, and the Philippines. These canbe heard, like a whisper pulsating throughout the piece since all the notes and harmonies have been derived from that material, split byspectrograms as sunlight gets split in a piece of glass.

The music is not submitted to mechanical time signatures. Instead, it follows the performers’ intuitions, the rhythm of their breath, thoughts and pulse, the ebb and flow. It is like hearkening to the beating of the Heart in which abyssus abyssum invocat(“deep calls to the deep” Psalm 41:8). In this motion, taking place as if outside time, bodies sometimes seem to dance. After all, a soul in love with God who sacrificed His life for her may well dance as she stands in the clearing between death and life, in the passage between them, where the Passover mystery is taking place.

Piotr Tabakiernik