MDA002 — John Albert DELANY, Te Deum — For choir and organ (1846)
1846
Edited by Richard Divall
Australian Music Series
ISBN 978-0-9923956-1-2 / ISMN 979-0-9009642-1-2
John Albert Delany was born on 6 July 1852 in London but migrated to New South Wales with his parents as a child. His musical education began in Newcastle where his father established a newspaper, and continued while at School at Lyndhurst College in Sydney under William John Cordner, organist of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. After leaving school, he joined the orchestra of the Victoria Theatre as a violinist.
In 1872 Delany was appointed choirmaster at the cathedral and organist in 1874 but resigned in 1877 to join the renowned Lyster Opera Company in Melbourne as chorus master. During the next nine years he worked with various itinerant musical companies, returning briefly to Sydney in September 1882 as musical director of the three-day celebrations marking the opening of the northern end of St Mary’s Cathedral, for which he composed his Triduum March. In 1886 he became musical director at St Mary’s Cathedral. His tenure there was notable for reintroduction of plainsong and unaccompanied polyphony, as well as the popular concert Masses where he could make use of his operatic experience. From 1894 he was a founder member of the new Sydney College of Music, and in 1895 he was also organist at the cathedral. Highlights of his conducting career include massed choral performance in Centennial Park to celebrate the foundation of the Commonwealth in 1901, and the Australian première of Sir Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius in the Sydney Town Hall on 21 December 1903, to mark the golden jubilee of the ordination of Patrick Francis Moran, Archbishop of Sydney, who presented him with a papal decoration. Delany died at Paddington on 11 May 1907.
Delany’s output as a composer includes two Masses, many motets and a cantata, Captain Cook, to words by P. E. Quinn. Other than his Song of the Commonwealth, composed for the swearing-in of Lord Hopetoun as governor-general in 1901, reissued in 1951, little of his music was published.
