Name Chris Willcock | Role Composer | |
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Books Psalms for Feasts and Seasons: Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran, and Wesleyan Rites Education Catholic University of Paris, Sydney Conservatorium of Music | ||
Christopher Willcock (born 1947) is an Australian Jesuit priest and composer of liturgical music.
Contents
Life
Willcock studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (graduated 1974) and was ordained to the Priesthood in 1977. He then pursued doctoral studies in sacramental and liturgical theology at the Institut Catholique de Paris. In 1998, he won the University of Melbourne's Albert H. Maggs Composition Award.
Collaborating with author and cartoonist Michael Leunig, Willcock won the 2006 Classical Music Award for Choral or Vocal Work of the Year with Excerpts from his work titled Southern Star (his cycle of nine Christmas carols composed in collaboration with Michael Leunig). The carols are composed for 4-part adult voices, or 3-part children's voices and are accompanied by harp - reminiscent of Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols. Other major works have been performed in recent years by the Tallis Scholars (May 2000) and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (December 1998).
In 2006 he was the St Thomas More Chair of Jesuit Studies at the University of Western Australia. He also gave the annual Slattery Lecture for the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia.
In 2004 he was appointed by the Melbourne Chorale as their first composer-in-residence and that year they performed two new a cappella pieces, Etiquette with Angels (a setting of a poem by another Australian Jesuit, Andrew Bullen) and his Latin setting of the Psalm 50, Miserere. The Melbourne Chorale also performed his John Shaw Neilson Triptych in late July 2004.