This Too Shall Pass (2009)
17 minutes
for Soprano and String Quartet
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)
Commissioned by The Firm New Music.
First performance by Greta Bradman (Soprano) and Leigh Harrold on July 27th 2009 at Pilgrim Uniting Church, Adelaide.
Speak Ye Stone and My Prime of Youth are available in arrangements for String Quartet and Soprano.
Since I Lost You and My Prime of Youth are available in arrangements for Clarinet and Piano. These arrangements are recorded by Crux Duo and released on their album 'My Place' (ABC Classic).
17 minutes
for Soprano and String Quartet
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)
Commissioned by The Firm New Music.
First performance by Greta Bradman (Soprano) and Leigh Harrold on July 27th 2009 at Pilgrim Uniting Church, Adelaide.
Speak Ye Stone and My Prime of Youth are available in arrangements for String Quartet and Soprano.
Since I Lost You and My Prime of Youth are available in arrangements for Clarinet and Piano. These arrangements are recorded by Crux Duo and released on their album 'My Place' (ABC Classic).
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.
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.