De Profundis was composed in the first half of 2025 in response to a commission from Flowers of Peace and the Australian War Memorial for the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War Two. It was premiered in a concert, entitled Greater Love – Second World War Memorial, directed by Christopher Latham and performed by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Brisbane Chamber Choir in Llewellyn Hall, Canberra, on 15 August 2025. The concert also featured works by other Australian and Japanese composers.

Composer’s Note

The work portrays the sense of deep fear, anxiety and encroaching panic that gripped much of Australia during the middle years of War World Two when in a frighteningly short space of time the rapid southward advance of the Japanese forces was followed by substantial bombing raids in the Northern Territory, the discovery of midget submarines in Sydney Harbour and several cataclysmic naval battles close to the Australian north-east coast. 

My work consists of settings for choir and orchestra of two texts – parts of Psalm 130 in Latin, know as ‘De Profundis,’ and a verse of the Lutheran hymn or chorale, ‘When in the hour of utmost need.’ I had asked my father, who was a child during World War Two, what music he remembered from his rural Queensland childhood during the war. Without any hesitation he identified this chorale. It makes a defiantly bold but brief appearance in my work albeit disturbed by the sound of stylised sirens (played by wind and brass instruments). On a personal level he connected the hymn’s music to the worry that his family felt at that time for his elder brothers who were fighting in the Australian army in New Guinea. 

Yet the work is predominantly quiet and subdued in its setting of the De Profundis text – perhaps repressed even. This symbolises the internalised nature of the fear that Australians experienced and which seems to me to be a truth that humans often encounter when faced with an uncontrollable external threat.  My piece tries to capture more a quiet sense of deep and real foreboding than the out-and-out terror experienced in so many countries of the world in the same period – not least the unimaginable terror of nuclear bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the war.

 

Texts

1. De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;

Domine, exaudi vocem meam.

Fiant aures tuæ intendentes

In vocem deprecationis meæ.

 

[From the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord;

Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

To the voice of my supplication.

Translation of Latin text from Psalm 130.]

 

2. When in the hour of utmost need

we know not where to look for aid,

when days and nights of anxious thought

no help or counsel yet have brought.

[Lutheran chorale, Wenn wir in höchsten nöten, Genevan Psalter c.1543.]

© www.andrewschultz.net 2025

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Andrew Schultz –  De Profundis

Canberra Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brisbane Chamber Choir, Christopher Latham – conductor, Llewellyn Hall Canberra, August 2025, premiere performance.

 

© This recording is copyright and is intended for private listening use only. It may not be broadcast or distributed without permission.

 

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