Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Sympathy is a setting of the poem of the same name by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem explores the allegory of a caged bird. This abstraction provides a profound vehicle for the poet, and others, to connect with the tragedy of when an individual is deprived of freedom in some way. Indeed, he was the first child of freed Kentucky slaves and the work in many ways expresses the weight of that history and the constraints of an imperfect and unfair world he experienced. The magic of the work as it appeared to me, is his use of something so abstract, that I, so different from him, and many years in the future, am still able to connect with the core truths of his experience, and through it, facilitate my own self-expression.

As a foreigner to the United States and its culture, I lacked this context upon first reading, and yet, to me the abstract allegory of a caged bird spoke to my own difficulties and circumstances at the time feeling constrained by restrictive immigration laws and severely limited means. The work moved me, so much so that I was unknowingly singing the text while reading it, and so, this piece is very much my musical reading of the text.

Work Details

Year: 2019

Instrumentation: Voice, cello.

Duration: 6 min.

Difficulty: Medium

Dedication note: Dedicated to Peter Wreford.

Commission note: Commissioned by consortium.