By Caroline Smith
After 40 years of providing sacred and liturgical music to the Catholic community in Perth, the group known as the Julian Singers has closed up shop, donating its remaining funds to Australian Religious Against Trafficking Humans (ACRATH).
The choir’s Musical Director Chris deSilva presented a cheque for $2,800 to Sister Naomi McClements and Sr Catherine O’Connor, who are both members of ACRATH in WA, at Our Lady of the Good Shepherd of Charity Convent on Monday 3 July.
The funds are expected to support programs fighting against forced marriage and human trafficking in Australia and throughout the Asia Pacific region, as well as towards a concert to be held by the group in August.
Reflecting on his time with the choir, Dr deSilva, who is a Music Consultant to the Archdiocesan Centre for Liturgy, said he had been a member since its early days, and affirmed that it had been a challenging but rewarding experience throughout.
“The choir was founded in 1976 and I joined around that time or a year later. I sang in the bass line until 1994, when I became Musical Director, a position I held until the choir disbanded,” he said.
“It was forced to disband because the number of members had dwindled and others had grown older.”
The story of the Julian Singers in Perth began with Father Ernest Rayson, originally from Melbourne, who had moved to Perth with other members of the Blessed Sacrament order to establish a chapel, on the invitation of Archbishop Lancelot Goody.
While in Melbourne, Fr Rayson had formed another choir called the Julian Singers, who were to perform at the 1973 Eucharistic Congress, and who took their name from Blessed Sacrament order founder Peter Julian Eymard.
Upon arrival in Perth three years later, he decided to form a local choir of the same name, and began to draw membership from priests and religious around the Archdiocese of Perth, with the Good Shepherd Convent in Leederville being secured for rehearsals.
Fr Rayson became the group’s first musical director, followed by Brother Gerry Crooks, John Willett, Joan Hind and finally Dr deSilva.
Dr deSilva said that Fr Rayson’s main aim with the group had been to preserve the Church’s musical traditions in the face of changing fashions while remaining faithful to the changes mandated by the Second Vatican Council.
“He was concerned that in the years after the Second Vatican Council, there was a real risk that the treasury of sacred and liturgical music that had been stored up by the Church in the past millennium might be consigned to the scrap heap of history,” he said.
“The choir would keep the musical tradition of the Church alive within the context of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II.”
From its founding in 1976, the Julian Singers performed at a number of events across the Archdiocese of Perth and other parts of WA, beginning with the Golden Jubilee of two Good Shepherd Sisters, Sr Isidore Kane and Sr Louis Griffen, in July that year, followed by an opening Mass for All Saints Chapel in August.
Its membership grew to 70 people in the 1980s, and it was at this point that the choir put on one of its most significant performances, for Pope John Paul II during his visit to Perth.
“We sang at one of the Masses celebrated by Pope John Paul II when he visited in 1986, at the inauguration ceremony for the University of Notre Dame Australia in 1991, and at a concert in Geraldton in 1994 with the Geraldton Choral Society to mark their tenth anniversary,” Dr deSilva said.
He added that the Julian Singers’ final performance was at a concert organised by ACRATH in 2015 and it was this which inspired the decision to donate the choir’s funds to this group.