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  • Score: Island songs
Island songs

Sheet Music: Score

Island songs : for two pianos and didjeridu / Peter Sculthorpe.

by Peter Sculthorpe (2013)

  • Sales Availability: This item is not available to customers outside Australia and New Zealand.
    Please contact Faber Music for all sales enquiries.
  • Library Availability: 785.2613/SCU 1 — Available for loan
  • Instrumentation: 2 pianos, didjeridu.

  • Audio Sample

    Performance by Amy Dickson, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Northey from the CD Island songs


    (this sample is of the Saxophone with string orchestra version of this work)

N/A

This item is not available to customers outside Australia and New Zealand.
Please contact Faber Music for all sales enquiries.

Product details

This work consists of two movements, Song of Home and Lament and Yearning. Based upon three melodies from Australia's far north, the first is an almost-forgotten popular song from Thursday Island. During World War II, with the threat of invasion, it gave comfort to the islanders. The second is a chant called Djilile, from the nearby mainland coast. It means 'whistling-duck on a billabong'. The third is a lament from Elcho Island. This was passed on to me some years ago by a local tribal elder.

Song of Home embraces the first two of the melodies and also makes references to the third. It sings of the love that the indigenous inhabitants have for their island home, the place where they and their ancestors were born. Sadly, because of climate change many of these places are now in peril. The second movement begins with the lament, with the thought of islands that may disappear forever in the rising tidal waters. This finally gives way to a return of the Thursday Island music. Here, it sings of the yearning for a more stable world. Given the will to do so, it is still possible for humankind to halt the worst effects of climate change.

Published by: Australian Music Centre (under licence from Faber Music) — 1 score (30p. -- B4 (portrait))

Duration: 18 mins, 30 sec.

Contents note:

I. Song of home -- II. Lament and yearning

Commission info: Commissioned by Bonnie Brown and Louisa Breen

Includes programme note.

Typeset edition.

Related products

This work also exists as the following versions:
- Saxophone with string orchestra

 

- Browse other works published by Australian Music Centre (under licence from Faber Music)

- Browse other works for Trios: Keyboard, woodwind

- Browse other works by Peter Sculthorpe

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