Trinity old boys teach faith through art with Tenebrae CD

By Anthony Barich
FOUR Trinity College old boys who have each attracted international attention for their musical prowess have produced a CD of Tenebrae reflections that draw the listener into Christ’s Passion as if they were actually there.

Oxford Music student Andrew Cichy (bass), WA Opera’s Roberto Francesco (tenor), World Project Music Festival stars Greg LeCoultre (counter tenor) and Cameron van Reyk (baritone) formed in 2002 when the latter roped the other three in to sing with him at his brother’s wedding.
Having formed with a view to singing liturgical music, within two years the quartet were known in Perth as one of the highest quality ‘self-directed’ male vocal quartets.
Their CD, Tenebrae Reflections, is their first under their group name Q and will be launched at a performance at St Joseph’s Church in Subiaco on 19 March at 7.30pm, and is available from The Record Bookshop.
The music of Q – which stands for Quartessence – is not just for concertgoers, Cichy said.
“We try to engage, to show the music in all its beauty for what it is. It’s also an evangelising act – faith through art,” Cichy said. “The most eloquent arguments or apologetics for our faith are made through art, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said, it’s in these brief encounters that we have a depth of experience that we wouldn’t gain from reading a whole library of books.
“The function of music in church, apart from worship of God, is to make the Word flesh.
“Christ came in the Incarnation; music draws us into the mystery – it’s our way of seeking the face of God in this life before we’re perfectly united with Him in the next.”
LeCoultre, Francesco and van Reyk have been singing responses since they were in primary school at Trinity College under the expert guidance of Annette Goerke, famed Cathedral organist for 40 years and director of music for some 25 years who first took organ lessons from Fr Albert Lynch, who revolutionised the music culture in the Archdiocese.
She is also one of the few people in the Archdiocese to have been awarded the Holy Cross Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice (“For Church and Pope”), the award given to lay people and clergy for distinguished service to the Church.
The trio was also part of the Cathedral choir as Trinity also supplied choirboys for the Cathedral since 1938 when Fr Lynch, who established the choir, approached the Christian Brothers for assistance.
The quartet’s repertoire has evolved according to each other’s strengths and interests which converged when they returned to the works of 16th century Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, plus many items that LeCoultre, Francesco and van Reyk sang in the Cathedral choir and realised with sadness that none of them were sung anywhere in the Archdiocese.
The quartet’s professional nous is being used to not only entertain but to evangelise, Cichy told The Record, as music is the Church’s highest form of art.
“We, as Catholics, are very quick to recognise artistic accomplishments in other media like Michelangelo who is so well known for his frescos in the Sistine Chapel in St Peter’s Basilica; his depiction of the hand of God reaching out to Adam is seen as iconic of the story of creation,” Cichy said.
“So it’s sad that there is such an un-awareness that these musical masterpieces are part of our incredibly rich heritage and patrimony.”
For 400 years after Victoria, these responses have continued to have an emotional immediacy that allows them to communicate with audiences in a way that transcends time, he said.
“They are incredibly dense and rich texts, infused with the supernatural – the battle between life and death in the suffering of Christ in His humanity, His betrayal and ultimately the unfathomable extent of His love,” Cichy said regarding the texts on Q’s CD.
This is highlighted in track five, Una hora (One hour), emphasising where Christ said ‘could you not watch with me for one hour, you who said you’d die for me. See how Judas has betrayed me’.
“Even in the opening motet you can, in a way, enter into it – the image is so vivid of Christ’s personal anguish – you can almost feel His heart breaking as He looked down and saw His disciples sleeping,” Cichy said. “In the hour when He would love them to be there when He most needs them, you can feel the encroaching darkness, feel that Judas isn’t far away; (and feel) His loneliness, His dejectedness.”
Track eight – Tenebrae factae sunt (There was a darkness over the earth) – powerfully recalls Christ’s cry from the Cross, ‘Oh my God why have You abandoned me?’ when He ‘gave up the ghost’.
Even singing this piece, Cichy said, “we reached that point we could feel what had happened, you’re right in the thick of it”. The quartet has born other fruit – St Joseph’s Chamber Choir emerged as a result of this quartet, with young Catholics drawing on this “incredibly rich heritage of music”.