The commission for Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze (The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross) came from Cadiz in southern Spain. The bishop of the cathedral requested Haydn to compose an orchestral work for Good Friday services. As Haydn wrote in the preface to the published score, "...The walls, windows and pillars of the church were covered with black cloth and only a large lamp hanging in the center lit the holy darkness. At noon, all the doors were closed: and then the music began." Haydn's music was to provide an introduction, interludes, and an epilogue for the meditations of the bishop on the seven last sentences uttered by Christ on the Cross. All the music was supposed to be slow, solemn, and profoundly spiritual. The resulting composition was one of the most revered and most popular of works of Haydn's lifetime, a work played in the capitals of Europe and later arranged for solo piano, for string quartet, and for soloist, chorus, and orchestra.

After a Maestoso ed Adagio introduction, Haydn divides the work into seven movements called sonatas that are marked Largo, Grave e cantabile, Grave, Largo, Adagio, Lento, and Largo. Most movements are in sonata form with lyrical themes of ineffable pain and loveliness and dramatic developments of tremendous suffering and beauty. Haydn claimed that "it was not an easy matter to compose seven (slow movements) to last ten minutes each," but each of his sonatas is so intensely concentrated, so deeply moving, and so profoundly spiritual that Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze is one of Haydn's most compelling works. The last sonata is followed by the only fast music in the work, a "Terremoto" (Earthquake) of overwhelming power.

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