This concert was the second-last performance in a program that has successfully toured from Melbourne to Sydney and will finally be performed in Canberra on Thursday 10th June, at Yarralumla’s Albert Hall. The Sydney iteration of Burden of Truth is a collaboration between The Song Company and Vox, a young adults’ chamber choir under the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, as well as with the teenage singers of the Conservatorium High School, the Song Company’s Education Partner. Consequently, this is a very youthful concert, with no-one on stage (except Artistic Director Antony Pitts) over the age of 50. These fresh and supple, highly trained voices combined in gorgeous, lush harmonies as they gave the world premiere run of Pitts’ own work, Transiens, as well as a new a cappella arrangement of Gavin Bryars’ famous Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, using a looped recording of a nameless homeless man singing a half-remembered, half-improvised hymn. These two modern works make up the lion’s share of a program of interconnected sacred choral music that spans the 16th to 21st centuries.
In Sydney, this religious music was contrasted with a very secular venue: The National Art School’s Cell Block Theatre was literally once the women’s wing of the old Darlinghurst Gaol, but has more recently been completely gutted to become a vaulting cathedral-like space, with the traces of its old stairwell and cells still visible in the rough-hewn sandstone. Fitted out with funky steel scaffolding, the venue’s juxtaposition of the old and the new is, in fact, perfectly suited to the Song Company’s ‘menu’.
The hors d’oeuvre was a traditional four-part hymn by James M. Black, His Love Never Failed Me Yet, sung in simple and lovely four-part harmony by the Song Company singers, who surprised the audience by starting the concert behind us. (A couple of latecomers popping up behind the singers and being shooed away provided some muffled laughs). This intriguing use of the space, in the manner of a chapel, was only just beginning. The singers began processing as if up to the altar, humming the plainchant melody Jesus autem transiens (our amuse-bouche course for the afternoon), as they were joined by dozens more singers from the Conservatorium and Vox, all pouring into the venue from the side doors. Once at the ‘altar’, they broke into full monophonic voice. Pitts’ conducting was precise and the singers tightly synchronised; no easy feat with plainchant’s often ambiguous rhythm. Perhaps spellbound with the reverent atmosphere, the audience did not applaud.
Our salad course, to continue the metaphor, was William Byrd’s 1605 motet Ave verum corpus. At the first notes, my husband (himself a long-time choral singer) sank back into his chair with a happy sigh, mouthing along with the words. It was truly a wonderful, rich performance of this immortal polyphonic work. Yet, in a fascinating example of audience groupthink (or was it just a painfully middle-class fear of clapping between movements taken to extremes?) there was still no applause.
Our main course, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, started almost imperceptibly softly with the fade-in of the looped recording. With his quavering voice, worn by age, rough sleeping and hard living, the unknown ‘co-composer’ of this work seemed for a moment to be an unexpected interloper from the streets of Darlinghurst. Over and over, trapped in poverty and in time, he sang his semi-garbled version of Black’s hymn, while the trained singers gradually built up a complex array of ever-changing, overlapping words and harmonies around it. Pitts provided expert direction, not only in the swirl of song but also in the complex choreography, as singers continually created small choirs, then shifted around slowly to disband and form new ones. The work is beautiful, but it is so long and repetitious as to be quite trance-inducing and a little dull, despite this sensitive performance. The end of the work fades out again, with only sopranos and altos with their ethereal pianissimo humming, and finally just the looped recording receding into the distance. Still no clapping.
Our dessert course was a triptych in 25 voice-parts. Transiens held our attention more thoroughly than Jesus’ Blood, even from the beginning with a strong bass drone that contrasted sharply with the preceding work’s ending. Transiens is a monumental new work, profoundly influenced by Renaissance sacred choral music in general and, of course, by Robert Wylkynson’s canonic treatment of Jesus autem transiens in particular. In its antiphonal use of small choirs (with more dynamic vocal placement throughout), there is a definite relationship to Tallis’s Spem in Alium here: not surprising when one reads in Pitts’ bio that he has also composed the work XL, a 40-voice-part companion piece to Spem, which, also in 40 parts, is beloved by ambitious choristers everywhere. Rich with chiaroscuro and the tension between chaos and order, sometimes almost schizophrenic in its imitative polyphony, sometimes a glorious wash of sound like waves rolling over the audience, Transiens is a significant new addition to the Australian choral repertory. Pitts should be extremely proud, not only of the composition, but also of the multiple young collaborating choirs and the remarkably unified sound he has achieved with them. All this happily exists on a new album, recorded in isolation during Covid and available now on Bandcamp and as a limited edition vinyl recording.
What an extraordinary achievement for The Song Company, to have completed this project during what is surely one of history’s most difficult periods to be a singer. They must be thanking their lucky stars that their Melbourne concerts came just before the current Victorian lockdown. How lucky are we, too, to be able to attend concerts like this maskless, and with very little concern about Covid at the moment, while Victorians (not to mention Indians and so many others around the world) are trapped once more in their homes, fearing sometimes for their lives.
Like the audience (who finally clapped very enthusiastically after an agonized moment of silence at the very end of Transiens) I heartily enjoyed this musical menu with its cleverly cohesive mix of styles and periods. I highly recommend that Canberra-based lovers of choral music, especially Christian sacred music, attend the final concert on the 10th of June.
The concert took place at 3pm on the 29th May 2021 at the Cell Block Theatre, National Art School.
If you don’t have the chance to get there and see The Song Company in person, you can buy the album of the music either as a digital download or a vinyl record at https://thesongcompany.bandcamp.com/ or visit website at http://the.song.company. It’s a great way to support your local artists and keep Arts alive in Australia.
Featured image : ‘Burden Of Truth’ pic Christopher Hayles photography