ABSTRACT
Rubbra’s portrayals of Christ are traced from his earliest songs to his late Sinfonia Sacra. The former were often settings of exquisite musical simplicity to texts of sensual poetic imagery featuring the Christ-child or Easter mystery. A new sense of Christ-centred spiritual seeking enters works during the 1930s, exemplified in Three Poems, Op: 41: ‘O Unwithered Eagle Void’ paints a surreal, dissonant picture of the crucifixion, whilst ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ relates in erotic imagery the soul’s spiritual journey towards union with Christ. A similar theme returns following his 1947 reception into the Catholic church, with ‘The Song of the Soul’ and Two Sonnets, Op. 87, and this spiritual eroticism is linked to Rubbra’s complex relationships with women, for which he found endorsement in the writings of Vladimir Solovyov. His conversion, which left traces in the Fifth Symphony, did not stifle his interests in Eastern religions. Influenced partly by Bramantino’s painting The Risen Christ, showing Christ emerging from the tomb still harrowed by suffering, Rubbra’s Sinfonia Sacra brings together the dualities of darkness and light, grief and joy, death and life, applying the Eastern non-dualist principle of unity to the heart of the Christian faith.
