Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

The poem of the same name "Annabel Lee" was written by Edgar Allan Poe. It is the story of an eternal yet unfortunate love. Almost from the outset, an evasive and foreboding air is present, as if beholding a love too good to be true. It is this somewhat fated yet wistful quality that I tried to capture by the stark accompaniment, broken up by the use of triplet rhythms to soften or blur a feeling of strict metre and a limited vocal register to imply a love song of a Renaissance textual character. This interpretation may be somewhat coloured by me, but I have tried to convey the mood based on the reading of the poem by Basil Rathbone.

The song is based on the Locrian Mode with root or tonic being B in the voice part. Strict ecclesiastical modal theory and harmony is ignored, the notes of the scale are used freely except to start and finish on the note B. The intervals of the voice melody were revised so as to facilitate sight-singing and consequently became more chordal in nature. This was needed since the guitar part would not help to establish any sense of tonality for the singer. This song can be performed by either female or male voice. The classical guitar part was based on the same scale, but a transposition was made to the root or tonic C, a semitone away. I planned a series of chordal structures, and these plus inversions were used in a sequential manner throughout.

Work Details

Year: 1979

Instrumentation: Voice, guitar.

Duration: 1 min.

Difficulty: Medium — Intermediate/Advanced