Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

In order for there to be resurrection, there must first be death. To begin to understand and take delight in love gained, one must first experience love lost. Beyond the light of day there will always be the darkness of the night.

I seem to find a simple, honest beauty in the melancholy; perhaps it is because the juxtaposition of light and dark, pain and ecstasy, love and loss seems altogether more real, more human. These four elegies (despite its lack of title, I feel the Dickinson poem to be just as elegiac as its preceding songs,) dive into the bittersweet symphony that is life, offering simultaneous consolation and cause for distress. Musically, I wish only to effectively paint the inherent beauty, devotion, sadness and fear of these poet's words. The words of the psalmist conveys for me much of this struggle of paradox within our life journeys: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid… perhaps so, but I must still walk through the valley.

Work Details

Year: 2009

Instrumentation: Soprano, piano.

Duration: 19 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Contents note: 1. Since I lost you (text by D. H. Lawrence) -- 2. Speak ye stones (text by Goethe, trans. E. Bowring) -- 3. My prime of youth (text by Chidiock Tichborne) -- 4. I shall know why (text by Emily Dickinson).

Dedication note: Dedicated to Leigh Harrold, Greta Bradman

Commission note: Written for Greta Bradman & Leigh Harrold

First performance: by Greta Bradman, Leigh Harrold — 27 Jul 09. Pilgrim Uniting Church, Adelaide

Range of Soprano: a - b flat''.

'Speak ye stones' was first composed as part of the song cycle Cityscape (2008) for
soprano and Baroque ensemble.