Work
Oblique Birdsong
for baritone and piano
About
"Stillness — lake dark as a mouth,
an unmoving tongue. In black water
whitebait
dart
like
seeds
through the still current. Each a small urge of becoming..."
The first of two songs making up 'Oblique Birdsong' - this song for baritone and piano explores the tension between the still darkness of pre-dawn with the coming life of the new day, and sinks the listener into a rarified, symbolic world of suspended time.
The work takes the idea of birdsong and, as the name might suggest, approaches the subject from an oblique angle. Here, the absence of birdsong heightens and illuminates its eventual appearance as a kōtuku rises from a lake and rears into sudden flight.
Commissioned note
commissioned by Jonathan Eyers
Text note
with text and music by Luka Venter