Christchurch Monody - The Marais Project

'Christchurch Monody' by Gordon Kerry appears on The Marais Project's album, 'Australian Monody.' Gordon Kerry writes about the piece:

"Terrorists frequently justify their atrocities by claiming to defend their culture, and so it was when an Australian racist murdered worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. My culture implacably opposes such a crime, so for this memorial piece I chose two passages from writings important to the three Abrahamic religions. First, the Hebrew writer known as Qoheleth (‘the preacher’, or Ecclesiastes) laments the seeming futility of human life; here the music makes much use of suspended dissonance and minor modality. The second section sets a later Jewish text, this one from the book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha, originally written in Greek. It assures us that the righteous souls are in God’s care. This is expressed in major-key harmony, and threaded through the music is the plainchant In paradisum from the Requiem Mass. The piece was commissioned for The Marais Project by the late Marena Manzoufas." (Gordon Kerry)

Australian Monody streams on all the major platforms and can be purchased here - http://www.move.com.au/disc/australia...

Performers: Susie Bishop, voice/violin; Jennifer Eriksson & Catherine Upex, viola da gamba; Tommie Andersson, theorbo

The Marais Project – directed by Jennifer Eriksson

Produced by Llew Kiek
Sound Engineer – Chris Doherty
Mastered by Michael Lynch, Shoehorse Sound
Video by James Fraser
Second camera - Kumar Sambhav Gupta
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Christchurch Monody

I returned and saw that the race is not to the swift,
nor bread to the wise.
nor favour to them of skill.
As fishes are taken in an evil net
and birds are caught in the snare
so are the children of men snared in the evil time.

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

But the souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God
there shall no torment touch them.
They are at peace,
and in the day of their visitation
they shall shine and run to and fro
like sparks among the stubble
for such as be faithful in love
shall abide in him.

Wisdom 3: 1, 3, 7, 9