By Rob Harris
London: Among the tombs of the great kings, queens and prime ministers – not to mention Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Laurence Olivier – a distinctly Australian sound bounced around the historic cathedral.
Out on the plains the brolgas are dancing, lifting their feet like war horses prancing.
On the last day of the year at Westminster Abbey, where William the Conqueror was crowned in 1066 and Elizabeth II farewelled two years ago, the Choir of St Paul’s College, Sydney, brought the antipodean Yuletide song Carol of the Birds to a new audience.
Jack Stephens conducts the Choir of St Paul’s College, Sydney, at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral as part of the choir’s European tour.Credit: Jim Winslet
“I think it’s probably the first time, just about ever, that the words ‘currawong’, and ‘lorikeet’, have been sung inside the abbey,” says Jack Stephens, the college’s director of music.
Composed in 1948 by William James and written by lyricist John Wheeler, the carol, for many years a staple at primary schools around the country, is a significant shift away from European Christmas carols depicting scenes and features from cold winters with snow falling.
Its chorus Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day is said to borrow from a Wiradjuri word meaning welcome.
“Often we sing Christmas carols, which you know, which talk about the bleak winter or very cold ones,” Stephens says. “But this is a really uniquely Australian carol ... bush birds and their habitats celebrating Christmas Day, and particularly using an Indigenous word like ‘orana’ as well, that’s really significant for us.”
The ghost of William McKie, the Melbourne-born organist and long-time master of the choristers buried in the west cloister of the abbey, would have been proud.
The choir, which won the International Christian Choir Competition last year, is amid a major European tour, which this week featured residencies at the abbey in London, St Paul’s Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral and York Minster for Evensong services. Performances at Saint-Sulpice, La Madeleine and Saint-Eustache are scheduled in Paris next week.
Accompanied by renowned organist David Drury, the 32-member choir has performed to thousands of worshippers, often more than once a day, in some of the world’s most famous churches.
Organist David Drury (left) performs with the choir in St Paul’s Cathedral in London.Credit: Jim Winslet
Elinor Trevelyan-Jones, 19, said to sing at Westminister Abbey had special significance to her because her father, Warren, was a full-time member of the choir for several years before she was born. Studying an arts degree at the University of Sydney, she said the fortnight’s tour was “the stuff of dreams”.
“This is just like a hobby for me. I’m not a professional, neither are most of us, so to get this opportunity is really amazing,” she says.
The choir is made up predominantly of undergraduates at the university, and Stephens says the group, with an average age of 20, comprises members studying everything from law to engineering and who “just have a real passion for singing”. The choir rehearses and performs every week during the year, and is primarily involved in the singing of Evensong in the college chapel.
Stephens, 29, admits he was overwhelmed at first with the nine-second reverb when the choir first performed at St Paul’s.
The choir has been invited to lead services during residencies at some of the most significant cathedrals in Europe.Credit: Jim Winslet
“It’s just really just like nothing else,” he says. “We finished the chord, and then we just hear it go down and down and down before it stops ... took a little bit of getting used to, just the difference in acoustics.”
He says he detected some initial apprehension from various hosts, who “didn’t know what to expect from a choir from the other side of the world”. But he was confident they were won over every time.
“For a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds, who are so passionate about liturgical choir music, to share that on the world stage is really something so unique,” he says.
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