Dona Nobis Pacem

Music for Holy Week: The Desolate City

Hiroshima. Dresden. Jerusalem. Three cities laid waste in times of war, their destruction separated by thousands of years. The Tudor Consort’s Good Friday performance this year features music inspired by these tragic events, weaving together themes of alienation, exile, despair and forgiveness.

Rudolf Mauersberger’s motet Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst, written in response to the wartime bombing of his beloved Dresden, bookends a concert that ends with New Zealand composer Douglas Mews’ powerful setting of Ghosts, fire, water, from the poet James Kirkup’s anthology No more Hiroshimas. And in between, you can hear ancient and modern settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah and Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.”)

Two main themes intertwine in this project: the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem contrasted with the destruction of the Second World War; and the exile of the Jewish prisoners in Babylon mirrored by the cry of the persecuted Catholic in a violently Protestant England.

The concert also features the late Jack Body’s anguished setting of Psalm 137, his last commissioned work for The Tudor Consort.

The Tudor Consort’s Music for Holy Week presentation is a high point of the Wellington musical calendar. Come and experience this poignant and glorious music amid a candlelit Cathedral, performed by New Zealand’s specialist Renaissance choir.

Wednesday 22 March, 2017