Ozymandias (2018)

6 minutes 30 seconds
for baritone and piano

Commissioned by David Cox.
First performance by David Cox (Baritone) and Andrew Georg (Piano) on September 4th, 2018 at Flinders Street Baptist Church, Adelaide.
Ozymandias is one of two art songs commissioned and premiered by David Cox. The text – one of David’s favourite poems (the other being Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, which I set in 2017) is a well-known sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley exploring the transience of power and the arrogance that may come with it.
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In this setting, the baritone narrates the story, while the piano creates a mystical, often other-worldly sonic backdrop, transporting us through time and place.

Score also available with 'I Think on Thee' as part of 'Two Songs for Baritone',

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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-Percy Bysshe Shelley
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