Sheet Music: ScoreDances with devils : concerto for percussion and orchestra / Iain Grandage.by Iain Grandage (2015)
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The Australian Bush - that great mythic landscape - has always held a particular grasp on the psyche of white Australians. It is the great unknown - beyond the realms of our control, and source of many subliminal fears. Indigenous Australians are more than aware of the power and mystery held within the earth, but those are not my stories to tell or my songs to sing. This work is instead a response to a series of short stories that reside within the Australian Gothic literary tradition of the 19th century, a tradition where the tropes of the old world - ghosts, spectres, haunted houses and mythological beasts, were transposed and transformed into events and situations that had particular resonance with the Australian colonial experience.
The opening movement of Dances with Devils revolves
around Barbara Baynton's Chosen Vessel. This concise
masterwork tells of the terror of a young woman one twilight, who
is dreading the return of a swagman to her isolated hut. On
hearing a passing horse, she mistakes it for a saviour. However,
the passing rider is a young religious man who mistakes her for a
ghost in her flowing nightgown, with her cries of "For Christ's
Sake", and refuses to stop. She falls victim to the lurking
swagman. The movement features the Marimba and is dominated by
triplet rhythms redolent of horse hooves.
The second movement is a subdued Sarabande, based on Edward
Dyson's Conquering Bush, a story in which a woman,
unable to cope with the searing, incessant noise of the birds
around her bush home chooses a drowning death for her and her
child instead. It features series of instruments being
transformed in pitch and timbre by water. The third movement is a
traditional scherzo, launching from a moment within Henry
Lawson's famous story The Drover's Wife where the
principal female character dreams of a different life, far from
the bush. This is juxtaposed with harsher sections that reflect
the reality of her current situation - namely staying awake all
night in a bush hut, awaiting a snake's reappearance.
The final movement provides a moment of hope amongst the gothic
landscape. It is a Tarantella inspired by Lola Montez, whose
famed Spider Dance was the talk of the goldfields when she toured
Australia in the 1850s.
I am indebted to Claire Edwardes for all she has brought to this
collaboration. Claire's energy, virtuosity and musical competence
redresses the seemingly impossible imbalance between a solitary
soloist and the massed forces of a symphony orchestra that is
inherent within the concerto format. She stands strong against
that conquering noise and casts doubt and darkness aside. I love
her for it.
© IAIN GRANDAGE 2015
Published by: Australian Music Centre — 1 facsimile score (87p. -- A3 (portrait))
Difficulty: Advanced
Duration: 24 mins
1. The Chosen Vessel -- 2. The Conquering Bush -- 3. The Drover's Wife -- 4. Lola Montez.
Commissioned by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
First performance by Claire Edwardes, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Northey at Grandage, Ravel, Sibelius (Costa Hall) on 17 Jul 2015
Includes program note.
Typeset edition.
ISMN: 979-0-720169-02-6
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