Program note: Eve Duncan's "The Submerged City"
- © Eve Duncan
- Source: Produced for and provided by Melbourne Composer's League
Eve Duncan
The Submerged City
for violoncello and pianoforte (2007)
Eve Duncan gained a Masters in Music at the University of Melbourne and Honours in Composition at La Trobe University. She was awarded in the International Modern Music Award for Composition in Vienna, and her music has been performed at international festivals and concerts in Australia, Asia and Europe. In 2007 she was commissioned for the Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner exhibition ‘Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.’ She collaborated with Aboriginal poet Lisa Bellear to create Tiger Snake in 2001, and the National Symphony of Thailand premiered her orchestral work Buddha on Mars in 2005. Her compact disc releases include Curiosities and Recorded Messages: Violin by Move Records.
On the evening following a summer heat wave, a change was in the air. At my home, this was evident in a kind of anticipation in the heat-laden air, as well as insects and birds murmuring and twittering. I spoke by phone to Melbourne artist Jon Cattapan from my home in Templestowe, twelve
kilometers from the bay, to his by the water in St Kilda. Cool breezes had already reached his home, as well as the beginning of what was to be a summer deluge.
Later I saw Jon's paintings that showed a city, perhaps Melbourne, drowned and submerged in water. Skyscrapers were visible under water that gave them a mythological atmosphere. This inspired this musical reverie, where drops of rain after summer heat lead to a fantasy of a living city underwater;
oblivious to its having being drowned.
