Major choral work gets world premiere in Hong Kong 24 years later
Opus by Baptist University instructor inspired by book of poems
A major choral work will be performed in the city a quarter century after it was conceived, its composer has remarked.
David Francis Urrows, who has taught music at Baptist University since 2001, calls the world premiere of his mega opus The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia on Monday night at City Hall “a strange synchronicity that happens in life sometimes”.
“I came to Hong Kong in 1989, and left for a few years in 1991. Jerry came in 1991, not knowing I had been here, was given my old office, and the first thing he saw was a poster on the wall from a Bach Choir concert that I had conducted,” the 59-year-old Boston native said, referring to Jerome Hoberman, music director of the Bach Choir since 1992.
It was also in 1992 that Urrows picked up a book of poems – George Barker’s Ode Against St. Cecilia’s Day – at a Massachusetts yard sale.
Urrows described Barker as a “post-apocalyptic” poet who questioned “the usual self-congratulatory stance of most St Cecilia pieces”.
The music he set for the librettos in English and Latin was deemed too “depressing” by the oratorio society in Providence, Rhode Island.