for Soprano, Tenor, Orchestra & Mixed Choir (35 minutes)
“Themes don’t come any greater than the ones Victoria Kelly summons here: life and death, love and loss, beauty, transience, and our place in the cosmos. Great themes call for great skills, and she has drawn on exquisite vocal soloists, orchestra, choir, and the perfectly picked words of five of this country’s premier poets. But it is her own sense of shape and scale, sonics and song, and remarkable ability to unsettle with one chord and comfort with the next, that makes this much-needed secular requiem a musical experience that is awesome in the truest sense.”
Nick Bollinger
Requiem is a secular contemplation of life and mortality.
The text is made up of five New Zealand poems – by Bill Manhire, Sam Hunt, Ian Wedde, Chloe Honum and James K Baxter – interwoven with fragments of the Latin Requiem mass for the dead.
The poems reflect wonder, loss, longing, and surrender, and the Latin fragments evoke our ancient and inherently human desire to understand and articulate our place in the universe.
The themes of the work are nature (air, light, rain, the tide, the stars) transformation, impermanence, and the inherent beauty, imperfection and fragility of people.
The music has also been inspired by the work of photographer, and NZ Arts Laureate, Anne Noble – who has in turn created images in response to the music, including the image above, taken at Te Rerenga Wairua – the leaping off place of spirits – at the tip of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Requiem received its World Premiere at the Auckland Arts Festival on 11 March 2023 and was awarded New Zealand’s most prestigious award for contemporary music – the SOUNZ Contemporary Award / Te Tohu Auaha – at the APRA Silver Scrolls in October 2023.
Requiem was written for my parents – Dennis Kelly (1930-1993) and Dene Kelly (1940 – 2003) – and is dedicated to Pete & Judy Cox, Phillipa & Peter Kelly, Julia Black, Kaye Glamuzina and Helen Medlyn.
Sam Hunt’s poem – Requiem – was interpreted into te reo Māori by Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and recorded by Anika Moa.
REQUIEM CONCERT SHEER POETRY
William Dart in the New Zealand Herald – 14 March 2023
“Victoria Kelly’s new ‘Requiem’ was a mighty achievement, earning its composer several minutes’ standing ovation. Effortlessly marshalling substantial choral and orchestral forces, Kelly melded many and diverse musical influences from Bach and Ligeti to passages in which one could hear the cool contemporary and Pacific. Her settings of five New Zealand poems went unerringly to their respective hearts, especially when we heard an impassioned Simon O’Neill singing in falsetto, stoically maintaining his lighthouse in Sam Hunt’s ‘Requiem’; or when soprano, Jayne Tankersley, unleashed a blast of anger in James K Baxter’s ‘High Country Weather’ with two searing top C’s. Kelly’s absolute assurance was there on every page, nowhere more so than when the Lux Singers laced homegrown lyrics with traditional Requiem texts.”
Score and parts are available for rental.
CREDITS
Featured photograph – Te Rerenga Wairua by Anne Noble
Lyric videos by Jonathan King
Poems reproduced with the kind permission of the poets
Interpretation of Requiem by Sam Hunt into te reo Māori by Sir Tīmoti Kāretu, with the permission of Sam Hunt
Requiem performed by Simon O’Neill with members of the Auckland Philharmonia and Choirs Aotearoa (led by David Squire)
He Taurere performed by Anika Moa with members of the Auckland Philharmonia and Choirs Aotearoa (led by David Squire)
Recordings created with the generous support of Creative New Zealand
World Premiere filmed by Chris Watson for SOUNZ and recorded by Radio New Zealand
VICTORIA KELLY 