Last First-Light (2021)
11 minutes
for soprano, tenor and piano
Commissioned by the Chœur Philharmonique International, Paris, with additional financial support from the Australian National Commission for UNESCO.
First performance (as ‘Ma Dernière Aube’) at Contre la Peine de mort- Affirmer la vie, National Library of France, Paris, on October 9th 2021. Performers: Ekaterina Anapolskaya (Soprano) and Joseph Kauzman (Tenor), with Anna Homenya (Piano).
Text by Peter Goldsworthy. Used with permission.
11 minutes
for soprano, tenor and piano
Commissioned by the Chœur Philharmonique International, Paris, with additional financial support from the Australian National Commission for UNESCO.
First performance (as ‘Ma Dernière Aube’) at Contre la Peine de mort- Affirmer la vie, National Library of France, Paris, on October 9th 2021. Performers: Ekaterina Anapolskaya (Soprano) and Joseph Kauzman (Tenor), with Anna Homenya (Piano).
Text by Peter Goldsworthy. Used with permission.
The abolition of the death penalty is not a topic I expect I would have chosen to compose a work on. Living in Australia, remote and largely safe, capital punishment is not something I’ve ever spent any time really thinking about. History tells us that its ghost is not as faint as we think - the last person executed by the state in Australia, Ronald Ryan, was hung in 1967.
I am deeply grateful for the assistance of Peter Goldsworthy, who resurrected some cutting-room floor extracts from his libretto for ‘Ned Kelly’, turned them inside-out, and pieced them back together. Alongside the duality of the two speakers presented in the text, Goldsworthy echoes some of the sentiments shared by Bruce Dawe in A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love, be it in a more dispassionate manner. At the core of this new text is an image of the condemned crying out for their mother; a circular and unsettling image of adult made child when faced with execution.
My setting is quite theatrical in approach, with the two protagonists presented with contrasting musical devices: the soprano, a dramatic and passionate melodic line set against a steadily descending bass line with disconcerting harmonic shifts; the tenor, a mechanical, low-set and measured statement of fact heard against striking dissonances in the piano.
Two musical quotations, both hymns, appear in the piano accompaniment. The first, appearing in the refrain, is from Charles Wesley’s ‘Depth of Mercy’, in which the opening verse asks:
Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
The second, more subtle quotation, occurs towards the end of the penultimate verse, at the point when both singers’ stories have woven together to become one on the words ‘death/tomorrow’. It is taken from the hymn ‘Abide with Me’:
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide in me.
© Anne Cawrse, 2021
Full text for 'Last First-Light' can be downloaded here. Please contact the composer if you would like to hear an archival recording of the full work.
I am deeply grateful for the assistance of Peter Goldsworthy, who resurrected some cutting-room floor extracts from his libretto for ‘Ned Kelly’, turned them inside-out, and pieced them back together. Alongside the duality of the two speakers presented in the text, Goldsworthy echoes some of the sentiments shared by Bruce Dawe in A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love, be it in a more dispassionate manner. At the core of this new text is an image of the condemned crying out for their mother; a circular and unsettling image of adult made child when faced with execution.
My setting is quite theatrical in approach, with the two protagonists presented with contrasting musical devices: the soprano, a dramatic and passionate melodic line set against a steadily descending bass line with disconcerting harmonic shifts; the tenor, a mechanical, low-set and measured statement of fact heard against striking dissonances in the piano.
Two musical quotations, both hymns, appear in the piano accompaniment. The first, appearing in the refrain, is from Charles Wesley’s ‘Depth of Mercy’, in which the opening verse asks:
Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
The second, more subtle quotation, occurs towards the end of the penultimate verse, at the point when both singers’ stories have woven together to become one on the words ‘death/tomorrow’. It is taken from the hymn ‘Abide with Me’:
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide in me.
© Anne Cawrse, 2021
Full text for 'Last First-Light' can be downloaded here. Please contact the composer if you would like to hear an archival recording of the full work.