Anthony Ritchie's fourth symphony explores the themes of suffering and transcendence with reference to the Christchurch earthquake and Christian mythology. The symphony's lyrics come from a series of poems by New Zealand poet Bernadette Hall depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, from the perspective of Christ himself. Hall's evocative poetry casts Christ in a very human light as he expresses his feelings of fear, anger, and powerlessness in response to his mortal suffering.
Ritchie deftly connects the symphony's 14 "stations" through various recurring musical ideas, with many of them converging on the work's conclusion. The chromaticism within the symphony's motifs and textures are a striking complement to its lyrical themes. Cluster-like harmonies produce an underlying sense of unease, occasionally becoming overwhelming as individual lines proliferate to create swelling, perilous waves. The fragility of humanity is heard in melodic contours that regularly begin an ascent only to fall again, as if buckling beneath some oppressive weight. Persecution is portrayed in pounding rhythms, ferocious stabs, and swooping gestures. One can see how Ritchie drew a parallel between the suffering in Hall's rendering of Christ's ordeal – being trapped, made to bear a heavy weight – and the suffering of the people of Christchurch in the deadly earthquake of 2011, the other major theme of the symphony.
Occasionally, the music assumes a sparse dream-like quality, as if experiencing a dissociative episode, but any moments of relative stillness usually retain an underlying sense of anxiety. It is not until the symphony's final moments that we reach a point of triumph or transcendence, as a defiant tutti passage rings out before reducing to a delicate conclusion with pitched percussion, strings, harp, and voice.
This symphony takes as its point of departure a book called The Way of the Cross, which combines images of sculptures by Llew Summers with poems by Bernadette Hall. Both the sculptures and the poems are based around the Christchurch Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, in New Zealand. Llew Summers' sequence of 14 sculptures entitled The Stations of the Cross were created for the Cathedral in 2000 and reflect on the final events in the life of Jesus Christ. Summers' challenging re-interpretation of the traditional Christian images caused controversy at the time. Bernadette Hall's 14 poems followed some years later and were informed by the sculptures. On 22 February 2011, the Cathedral was ruined in the second of the major earthquakes that shook Christchurch, and in 2019 the decision was made to demolish the Cathedral. The fate of Llew Summers' sculptures is uncertain.
In response to these events, this symphony includes several songs based on Hall's poems, developed into a one-movement structure divided into 14 sections, or "stations". Only eight poems are included; the other stations are purely instrumental, forming musical meditations on the texts, as well as suggesting other images and moods related to the earthquakes. The trials and suffering of Jesus Christ as depicted in the poems and sculptures are associated with the trials and suffering of the city of Christchurch. There are also personal associations in the music, deriving from my own experiences in the Cathedral. These are represented by two musical quotations and re-compositions. The first is from Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli (in Station 5, quoting from the Crucifixus) and the second is from Bach's St John Passion (in Station 12, quoting from the opening chorus). The symbolic power of these musical quotations underpins the narrative. Therefore, elements of mythology and human experience are brought together in this symphony.
