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Work
Add to wishlist- for high voice and 12 players
- By:
- Duration:
- 13' 00"
- Instrumentation:
- flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon/contra-bassoon, horn, trumpet, harp, piano, two percussion (marimba, vibraphone, large gong, small cymbal)
- Contents:
- 1. In loss the trees bear stings...; 2. People are ill, dying.; 3. Grief becomes spread like arsenic...
Availability
- This work has a score, 1 Media on Demand and a resource
Programme Note
The work was commissioned in 1970 by the NZ Broadcasting Corporation. The texts are taken from Janet Frame’s 1967 verse collection, The Pocket Mirror. The songs all have to do with aspects of death; but it is the second – a setting of the poem , “People are ill, dying,” which colours the entire work. This introduces the threat of nuclear warfare, expressed in the recurring image of the mushroom. The two flanking songs – extracts from the long poem “Some Thoughts on Bereavement” – consider death in a more individual context, and conclude that in experiencing the death of others, part of ourselves dies too. The music, which is scored for high voice accompanied by solo winds, percussion, harp and piano, translates the eloquent verbal images into purely musical ones. The result, in the words of one critic, is a “piece of considerable emotional powers’” in which ’"the tight, almost compressed construction maintains an intensity of feeling at a high level, nowhere diffused by padding."
- Text Note:
- Text by Janet Frame
- Commissioned:
- Commissioned by the New Zealand Broadcastng Corporation
- Difficulty:
- Advanced
- Influences:
- Dedication:
- To the memory of my father
Performance History
| 17 Nov 2001 |
Performed by Pepe Becker (soprano) and Stroma with conductor Hamish McKeich at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in Wellington |
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| Hamish McKeich Pepe Becker Stroma | ||
| 04 Nov 2002 |
Performed by Kate Lineham (Stroma) with conductor Hamish McKeich at the Marama Hall, University of Otago, in Dunedin |
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| Hamish McKeich Stroma |