Quietly genius … New light on the Requiem – Gordon Kerry premieres with ACC
by Pepe Newton | Aug 18, 2025 |
Australian Chamber Choir | Renaissance Requiem
17 August 2025, streamed from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Middle Park, VIC
In Missa pro defunctis, composer Gordon Kerry gently rewrites the Requiem tradition, not by burning it down, but by opening windows to let more light in. That sense of illumination framed this thoughtful Australian Chamber Choir program, where Kerry’s newly commissioned work was interspersed with Renaissance and early Baroque gems. The result was not a confrontation between old and new, but a luminous conversation across the centuries.
The concert opened with two well-loved works: Tomkins’ When David heard and Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium. The first, all suspended grief and raw lamentation, was delivered with emotion and control; the second shimmered with slow-unfolding lines and rich harmonic colour. The choir’s deep bass section particularly shone in Lauridsen’s final Alleluia, anchoring the stillness with warmth.
From there, we entered the woven structure of Kerry’s Missa pro defunctis, threaded movement by movement between Renaissance motets and anthems. The programming here was, I think, quietly genius: rather than presenting the premiere as a monolith, the Australian Chamber Choir let it grow in dialogue with the repertoire it echoes and honours. Kerry’s stated intent was to write something “in line, in terms of mood and scale, with the Renaissance music in which the Australian Chamber Choir excels.” Mission accomplished.
That first movement began with still chant-like austerity and then, as the layers built, the dissonance began to glow. Kerry’s harmonic language is unquestionably modern, more angular and searching than his Renaissance predecessors, but the structural DNA is shared as is the sacred text at the core. The words “et lux” quite literally shone, supported by a spirited tenor solo and a fluid series of dynamic and rhythmic shifts.
The Offertorium and Sanctus featured lovely solo moments emerging gently from within the choir, not showy but integrated. The Sanctus in particular grew to a bell-like jubilance, full of well-paced moments of silence and bright rhythmic bursts. The Hosanna in excelsis rang out joyfully – glorious without excess.
Following this, Byrd’s Ave verum corpus offered a moment of repose. You could see it in the choir’s stance: this was music they knew and loved. They shaped it with phrasing that felt organic and unforced.
Later, in Lux aeterna, Kerry gave us another memorable moment of light. In tone and shape, this movement felt closer to Lauridsen than Victoria.
Just before Kerry’s radiant In paradisum, we were treated to the Australian premiere of Ego flos campi by Raffaella Aleotti, a rare and rich moment. Aleotti’s music, drawn from the first known published collection of sacred works by a female composer, bursts with the vitality of the Venetian tradition. Written for double choir, this seven-voice motet was both intricate and expressive, a lovely flower of a piece finally getting its time to shine.
The last movement of Kerry’s requiem, Credo quod redemptor meus, offered a quiet culmination. The text, drawn from the Book of Job “I know that my Redeemer lives…” was sung with steady affirmation. There was no dramatic climax, no judgment day thundering in. Just a warm, slow light, like the afternoon sun that filtered through the church windows and into the live stream. The Requiem closed with presence, not spectacle.
Credit must be given to Elizabeth Anderson, who stepped in at the last moment to conduct the performance in place of the unwell Douglas Lawrence. The choir’s Assistant Artistic Director and a singing alto, Anderson led with calm focus, guiding the ensemble through a program that was intricate in both structure and spirit.
Kerry’s Missa pro defunctis is dedicated to his aunt, Marcia Lewis, who died in 2023 at the age of 102. That quiet act of memorial added further resonance to the program’s central themes of grief and grace, of remembering and letting go. The Australian Chamber Choir honoured that gesture with care.
My only wish? That one day we might hear Kerry’s Requiem performed in full, unbroken. It certainly deserves to be heard both within tradition and on its own luminous terms.