Christoph Demantius, German St John Passion (1631), 6-part choir

León Schidlowsky, Nameless Mass for Victor Jara, graphic score (1976)
with poems by George Grosz and Vladimir Mayakovsky
two choirs with narrators, organ & percussion

Francis Poulenc, A night of snow (1944), 6-part choir
four poems by Paul Éluard

with works of Ockeghem, Philippe Hersant, Violeta Parra, Victor Jara & Sergio Ortega

"In us are all passions and all vices"
– George Grosz

Choral music under duress – a common thread through this program – is a kind of living paradox, when singing emerges from times of disorder and menace. The concert weaves between several such cases in history, which have rare powers to speak to our own era.

– The St John Passion of Christoph Demantius, possibly the finest detailed setting of John's passion narrative in musical history, comes from the centre of the Thirty Years War, when differing persuasions of Christianity were engaged in mutual destruction, and witch-trials abounded as explanatory conspiracy theories for the loss of decent life. Demantius himself, an unjustly forgotten composer, lost most of his children from four marriages to the deprivations of the times. Much of his large output is lost, but the Passion culminates his late style, published in 1631.

– Nameless Mass by the Chilean León Schidlowsky is a dramatically-styled graphic score, a direct response to the horrific military coup in Santiago in 1973, composed after his migration to Israel for a choir in Hamburg, Germany. As a Jewish composer, Schidlowsky employs sparse words from the Mass for their ritualistic Latin qualities, setting them among disruptive poems of Mayakovsky and the visual artist George Grosz. The dedication to Victor Jara commemorates a prominent political singer, poet and activist of the New Chilean Song, which concludes the concert with songs of Violeta Parra and Sergio Ortega. Victor Jara was immediately imprisoned in the notorious sports stadium that now bears his name, mistreated and killed with thousands of others.

The Astra Choir is joined by organist Linda Kent and percussionists Alexander Meagher and Timothy Phillips in the interpretation of Schidlowsky's drawings.

– A night of snow is a special fusion of poetry and choral composition, from the last winter of the struggle between the French Resistance and the occupying Nazi forces. The surrealist and Jewish poet Paul Éluard lived in constant danger under changing names and addresses, remaining active in the Resistance and in publication of its poets. He sent these four poems to his friend Poulenc, who responded to their elusive yet concrete images of the struggle with an unusual aphoristic intensity. The cantata was premiered in the first months after liberation.

The contemporary French composer Philippe Hersant provides further pathways through the program with his palette of styles that transcend ancient and modern forms of modality. Niels Bijl and Jason Xanthoudakis join us for Hersant's remarkable Seven Miniatures for two saxophones. Helen Ayres combines with the Choir as virtuoso soloist for Nostalgie: Through Adam's Fall, a treatment of a chorale from the earliest days of the Lutheran revolution.

Helen Ayres, violin
Niels Bijl and Jason Xanthoudakis, saxophones
Linda Kent, organ, Kim Bastin organ, piano
Alexander Meagher and Timothy Phillips, percussion

The Astra Choir and soloists
conducted by John McCaughey

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