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  • Parts: Beach burial
Beach burial

Sheet Music: Performance Parts

Beach burial : for choir and orchestra / Andrew Schultz

by Andrew Schultz (2009)

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  • Instrumentation: SATB choir, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, bassoon, contrabassoon, 2 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, timpani, strings.

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Product details

There are three striking images in Ken Slessor's great World War Two poem Beach Burial that I have tried to capture and develop in music. The first is the image, both tranquil and deeply disturbing, of the dead bodies of sailors washed ashore at first light after a sea battle. The second image is the ominous, almost bitter, impression of the heavy tread of feet and driven stakes of driftwood as the bodies are buried in the sand. And then the final, forlorn image of makeshift epitaphs to the unknown washed away as the natural world overwhelms the signs of the asinine conflicts of humans at war. The calm stillness of Slessor's observation seems to be at odds with the implicit horror of the scene. Perhaps this is because the atmosphere in his seascape is heavy with salt and humidity as if this were a familiar and comfortable Australian beach rather than the distant and brutal strand at El Alamein in The Gulf of Arabs.

— Andrew Schultz, March 2009

Published by: Australian Music Centre — 1 set of performance parts

Difficulty: Advanced

Duration: 10 mins

Commissioned by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra.

First performance by Brett Weymark, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra at War and Peace (Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall) on 1 Nov 2009

Typeset edition.

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This work is also available in the following products:

Beach burial
Score: Beach burial : for choir and orchestra / Andrew Schultz

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Score: Beach burial : for choir and orchestra (piano vocal score) / Andrew Schultz ; text: by Kenneth Slessor.

Beach burial
Score: Beach burial : for choir and orchestra (choral score) / Andrew Schultz

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CD: Beach burial / Andrew Schultz

 

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Analysis & Media

- Resonate Article: Art Music Awards 2011 - finalists announced

- Article: Music and the meaning of water
by Andrew Schultz
Naxos Musicology International (2 May 2020)

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