Parting Songs (2016)

13 minutes
for soprano, tenor and piano

Commissioned by The Firm New Music, Adelaide
First performance by Kate Macfarlane (Soprano), Robert Macfarlane (Tenor) and Jamie Cock (Piano) on 5th December 2016 at Madley Rehearsal Studio, Adelaide University.

1. Not Weeks, Not months
2. The Ghost of our First Days
3. Departure
4. The Last Toast

Texts by Anna Akhmatova
Parting Songs sets four evocative and heartbreaking poems by Russian poet Anna Akhamatova,

Two of the songs are sung by Soprano (Not Weeks, Not Months and Departure), and two by Tenor (The Ghost of Our First Days and The Last Toast). In this way the two singers create a dialogue centred on loss, separation, alienation and despair.

The songs can be sung as a compete cycle (in the order suggested) or as individual songs.

​Not weeks, not months we spent – but years
Parting. And now at last
The chill of real freedom,
And the grey wreath over the brow.
No more treason or betrayal,
And you’ll not listen till the dawn
To my flow of evidence,
To my tale of perfect innocence.
​
​And as ever in the days of final separation,
The ghost of our first days knocked at the door,
And in burst the silver willow
In a grey magnificence of branches.
To us, the frenzied, scornful, bitter,
Not daring to lift our eyes from the ground,
A bird sang in a blissful voice,
Of how we cherished one another.
​Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold
the sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
 
I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.
​I drink to our ruined house,
To all of life’s evils too,
To our mutual loneliness,
And I, I drink to you –
To eyes, dead and cold,
To lips, lying and treacherous,
To the age, coarse, and cruel,
To the fact no god has saved us.