Notes and Text for CD Tracks
Ian McKinley -
Before the Morning Star
Sandra Milliken -
In Paradisum
Gerard Brophy -
Capricornia
Joseph Twist -
Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep
Christopher Willcock -
Songs of Parting and Remaining
Iain Grandage -
Three Australian Bush Songs
Ian McKinley -
arrangements of Australian Folksongs (Botany Bay, Moreton Bay, Waltzing Matilda)
Brophy, Gerard: Capricornia
Gerard Brophy studied composition with Don Banks, Anthony Gilbert and Richard Toop at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. Gerard has received numerous prestigious fellowships and his music has been performed and commissioned by some of the world's leading ensembles - including the Residentie Orkest, the St Louis and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, ANUMADUTCHI, the Nash Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Elision, Het Trio, Ensemble Modern, the ASKO Ensemble, Ensemble l'Itineraire and Duo Contemporain. Currently lecturer in composition at the Queensland Conservatorium, he is regularly sought after to present masterclasses in Europe and the United States.
Commissioned for Canticum's performance at the 7th WSOCM, Capricornia sets a fragmentary Italian text to create an atmospheric impression of the beauty and richness of the light that Australia shares with the Mediterranean, from whence Australia has gained so much in immigration and culture. Amidst this cornucopia of riches, a dark infinite soul resides (perhaps alluding to the harsh and mysterious outback of Australia). The Capricornia region is an area in central Queensland which has an historically strong Italian immigrant culture.
Grandage, Iain: Three Australian Bush Songs
Musician-in-Residence (Creative Studies) at the University of Western Australia, Iain Grandage spent a number of years as a freelance composer, cellist and music director. His theatre composition credits include the Helpmann Award-winning score for Cloudstreet (Black Swan/Company B) and he has also composed scores for BBC Radio3 and Radio4, ABC Radio and for short films.
Three Australian Bush Songs celebrates the various moods and sounds of the Australian bush. The silent glow of a misty dawn is broken by the awakening birds, whose dawn chorus rises to a frenzy of life and harmony. The choir's cacophony of bird calls gradually diminishes with the onset of dusk. At sunset, the whole world itself becomes quiet, the sky aglow like molten metal, sinking into the purple of night. In this piece, you will hear calls of Australian birds – nature's music, familiar sounds not only in the Australian country-side, but also in suburbia.
McKinley, Ian: Before the Morning Star; arrangements of Australian Folksongs
Until his retirement in 1987, Ian McKinley was a lecturer in music at Mt Gravatt College of Advanced Education (now part of Griffith University). He was active for many years in tertiary-level music education, as well as being a conductor, organist and singer. His chief interest now is composition, with many works written for specific occasions and ensembles. In 2002 his choral work The Spirit's Gift was published in the United Kingdom by the Royal School of Church Music and performed in Westminster Cathedral, London, by massed RSCM choirs.
Before the Morning Star (2004) incorporates a text from a Pygmy (African) hymn. The universal, mystical nature of the poem inspired the composer to use a European style readily accessible by an audience.
The Australian folksongs recorded represent a more recent phase of Australian history, that following the settlement of Caucasian people on the ancient continent of Australia. The folk music of white Australia derives almost entirely from the British Isles. The ballads were passed on by aural tradition until publication around the turn of the 19th Century. Most texts have several tunes and variants.
The annexation of Australia by Britain resulted from the loss of its North American colonies in the 18th Century. Deprived of its penal stations to which criminals could be sent and then forgotten, Britain decided to establish a new penal colony at the recently "discovered" Botany Bay. Several ships with convicts and guards arrived in 1788, but settled at Sydney Cove, a little further north. The eastern one-third of the continent became known as New South Wales.
Brisbane Ladies (1890) is a ballad about cattle drovers who are leaving the girls at Toowong, a suburb of Brisbane, to return up-country, passing various places named in the song. The main tune is a British sailors' song, Spanish Ladies. Grandfather's Clock, used in verse 4, was a popular American song of the late 19th century. Augathella is a hamlet in far western Queensland. Cattle are still raised on properties comprising many thousands of hectares, and referred to as 'stations'.
1. Farewell and adieu to you, Brisbane ladies,
Farewell and adieu to the girls of Toowong,
We have sold all our cattle and have to be moving,
But we hope we shall see you again before long.
Chorus:
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true Queensland drovers,
We’ll rant and we’ll roar as onward we push,
Until we get back from the Augathella Station,
What joy and delight is the life in the bush.
2. The first camp we make, we will call it the Quart-pot,
Caboolture, then Kilcoy and Colinton’s Hut;
We’ll stop at the Stone House, Bob Williamson’s paddock,
And early next morning we cross the Blackbutt.
Chorus
3. Then on we will go to Yarraman Creek, boys,
It’s there we will make our next camp for the day,
Where the water and grass are both plenty and sweet, boys,
And maybe we’ll butcher a fat little stray.
Chorus
4. When the camp is all snug and supper is over,
We sit round the fire enjoying a smoke
And yarning of droving, of cattle and horses
And all join in chorus of Grandfather’s Clock.
Chorus
6. Then fill up your glasses and drink to the lasses;
We’ll drink this town dry, then farewell to them all;
And when we’ve got back from the Augathella Station
We’ll hope you will come and pay us a call.
Chorus
Botany Bay is from an 1885 English music-hall comedy Little Jack Shepherd, and has much in common with an 1820 London broadsheet.
Moreton Bay tells the story of convicts who were sent to an outpost on the banks of a river that empties into Brisbane's Moreton Bay. Patrick Logan, Commandant from 1826, was hated and feared for the extreme cruelty of his regime - so much so that when he was killed by Aborigines in 1830, the colony was 'insane with joy'. The song is set to a beautiful Irish tune.
Waltzing Matilda is like a second national anthem to Australians, most of whom learn it in childhood and know it well. The poem, by 'Banjo' Paterson, was written around 1895 in Western Queensland (near Winton). Three tunes exist. We are singing the usually accepted one by Marie Cowan, finally published in 1903.
In early days "swagmen" roamed the countryside looking for casual work and handouts of food. They carried a "swag", a rolled up blanket containing a few items of clothing, cooking utensils, etc. "Matilda", a name of Teutonic origin, came to mean "a de facto wife", and hence came to be applied to the swagman"s swag. A good place to camp was beside a "billabong", a dead-end channel off a river where the original river course had become blocked. Tucker (food) was carried in a "tucker-bag". A "squatter" was a grazier, originally someone who had "squatted" or settled on a piece of crown land without permission. A "jumbuck" was a sheep.
Milliken, Sandra: In Paradisum
Sandra Milliken is a composer, teacher, choral clinician and conductor of The Queensland Youth Choir. As a result of her work as an adjudicator and workshop clinician, Milliken has forged multi-cultural links, especially with Finland, where her compositions are published by SULASOL. Her choral works have been performed in Finland, Estonia, England, USA, Canada, Japan and Australia.
In Paradisum was written for Canticum in 2002-2003 and is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Bali bombing tragedy of October 2002. It opens with a tranquil "requiem aeternam" phrase which leads into the Latin text of "in paradisum", followed by a chorus of angels in the middle section and turning the full circle to the opening idea, which resolves with the Indonesian word "perdamaian", meaning "conciliation".
In Paradisum – Translation of text
May the angels lead you into paradise;
May the martyrs welcome you upon your arrival,
and lead you in to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May a choir of angels welcome you,
and, with Lazarus, once poor,
may you have eternal rest.
Perdamaian.
Twist, Joseph: Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep
Based in Brisbane at the University of Queensland, where he is undertaking Ph.D. studies with Philip Bracanin, Joseph Twist is actively involved in choral music as both a composer and a chorister. He was the recipient of The Australian Voices Composer Award and the Chanticleer Student Composer Competition for 2003.
Willcock, Christopher: Songs of Parting and Remaining
Christopher Willcock studied composition under Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1977 and then did doctoral studies in sacramental and liturgical theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris conjointly at Paris-IV (Sorbonne). Whilst most of his compositional activity has been in the area of liturgical music, an increasing body of work has been commissioned for the concert hall. In 1999 Musica Viva Australia commissioned him to write a piece for the Tallis Scholars, entitled Gospel Bestiary, which was performed throughout their Australian tour in 2000 and subsequently in Great Britain.
Songs of Parting and Remaining (1995) sets three poems of John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942), into which the Latin plainchant antiphon "Vox in Rama" has been introduced. The first poem moves from the cloudless opening of Spring to an intimation of death at its kernel. "Vox in Rama", from the Mass of the Holy Innocents, tells of Rachel weeping for her children, inconsolable since they are no more*. It frames the second poem, which confronts the experience of death more directly. The final poem denies the last word to all the death-dealing forces in human existence. 'Summer' says the poet, 'shall not die'.
* Matthew 2:18 - In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
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