Quem Quaeritis (1967)
(A Play of the Nativity)

Quem Quaeritis – a Play of the Nativity (1967, revised 1972 and 2021)

As an undergraduate composition student at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium in 1967, it was never my intention to compose a children’s nativity play until Graham Williams, a friend and fellow student, persuaded me to postpone work on a string quartet in total serialism – a technical exercise in vogue at the time – and compose a nativity play for his church choir to perform at Christmas. Graham had assembled a text of English carols and Latin chants narrating the events of the Nativity, and these I set to music in a hybrid mediaeval/modern style in which the influence of my teacher, Peter Maxwell Davies, is often evident, and there’s more than a hint of Messiaen. I can also recognise my own voice emerging.

Today, Quem Quaeritis seems relevant as a poignant reminder of how the joyous aspirations and wonderment of simple folk have been mercilessly exploited throughout the centuries, contributing to the apocalypse we now face, and a far cry from the “freshe fontane that springes new” which signifies the miraculous birth and hope for renewal.

Quem Quaeritis, dedicated to Graham Williams, was first premiered in St. Cuthbert’s Church and later St. Peter’s Cathedral, Adelaide, in December 1967. It was slightly revised in 1972 for a performance by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra the following year. I extracted and published five of the carols (as Five Carols from Quem Quaeritis) in 1981, in arrangements I made especially for Nicholas Routley and the Sydney Chamber Choir. The manuscript of the complete work was missing, presumed lost, for many years until the conductor and musicologist William Kempster rediscovered it in a library and insisted that it should be revived. The process began in 2020, and for this I thank the editing skills of William, Paul Stanhope and Peggy Polias.

On May 21 2021, at the Sydney Conservatorium, dedicated student performers conducted by Paul Stanhope brought the piece to life once more after almost fifty years. For this occasion it was accompanied by a moving dramatization by Narelle Yeo, which finds correspondences between the traditional Christmas story and a sea journey by refugees in search of a new life.