– Marco Carvalho
A night of praying with luxury guests. This is how the passage of the Eton College Chapel Choir by the Macau SAR should be understood.
The Choir – one of the most celebrated choral singing groups in the world – will perform next Tuesday evening at St Joseph’s Seminary and Church, as part of a Lent liturgical celebration organized by the Diocese of Macao.
Conducted by choirmaster Tim Johnson (David Goode will play the organ), the members of Eton College Chapel Choir will interpret works by composers such as Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn or Giachino Rossini with moments of prayer and the reading of passages from the Holly Scriptures, in an event that Father Cyril Law Jr. defines as a “community gathering” designed to bring the Catholic faithful of Macau closer to God: “This is not a concert per se. Rather, it is an evening of prayer set in a sacred and religious musical context. So it’s really a community gathering focused on lifting up the souls to God,” said the chaplain of St Joseph Diocesan College to O CLARIM.
In addition to Richte Mitt, Gott, by Felix Mendhelson or Giachino Rossini’s O Salutaris Hostia, the Choir will also interpret themes such as Robert Parsons’s Ave Maria, Carlo Gesualdo’s O Vos Omnes, When David Heard by Thomas Tomkins or A New Song by James McMillan, in a line-up that was adopted with the purpose of promoting a reflection on Lent, one of the most important periods in the calendar of the Catholic Church: “The repertoire has been slightly adapted to better reflect a more Lenten theme,” Father Cyril Law Jr. told O CLARIM. “Since it’s not a concert, so one would expect the participants to be devout and recollected during this prayer service. Good quality singing certainly is of great assistance,” adds the priest, one of the main promoters of Macau’s Cathedral Schola Choir.
The performance, explains Father Cyril Law Jr., does not contemplate any joint initiative between Eton College Choir and the choral ensembles of the territory. Cathedral Schola and the other parish choirs of Macau are already preparing for the Holy Week, Father Law told O CLARIM: “Since it’s a weekday evening, it’s not easy to organise it as a joint effort with our local choirs. Also, our parochial and Diocesan choirs are already much engaged with preparing for the Holy Week liturgies,” Cyril Law Jr. explains. “So, this evening prayer is aimed more at attracting the general public to an authentic experience of meditative prayer,” the priest reasserts.
Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI in honor of the Virgin Mary, Eton College is an in-house boarding school exclusively for boys. At the same time that Eton was founded, the monarch also ordered the foundation of a second college – King’s College of Cambridge – and endowed both institutions with two magnificent chapels. When the college was founded, Eton’s rectory commissioned a dozen employees and 16 students to sing during religious services. Except for a few short interludes, the choir has been making itself heard from the mid-fifteenth century until the present day.
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