Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

There is nothing quite like the Australian arid land at sunset that can provoke reveries, melancholy and awe. The mallee is a place of horizon and scrub, light and birds and a skyful of silence. Mallee farm at dusk takes the listener back to such a sunset, the sounds of the horses hooves in the choir, the call of the bronze-wing pigeon in the clarinet. As the rider moves through this landscape, he arrives at a squat pug hut and is struck by an eager bird bursting into song. The clarinet goes into a long rapture based on mallee pigeon recordings and the rider confesses that every sunset is now full of memories of that birdsong or a rabbit's cry, a plover swooping or drowsy clouds passing by. The dusk falls with the choir singing of the full blown petals of a windmill stirless in the lonely west and a final chirping birdcall. It is a very evocative song of a place and a time of the day when memories linger as the sun sets. The text by Jindyworobak poet Flexmore Hudson is an insider's knowing of the mallee, as he taught there for many years and the musicality of his imagery anchors the song in beauty.

Work Details

Year: 1993

Instrumentation: SATB choir, piano, clarinet in A.

Duration: 3 min.

Difficulty: Medium — Professional clarinetist required

Commission note: Commissioned by Russell Larkin, Adelaide Chorus.

First performance: by Adelaide Chorus, Russell Larkin, Greg Roberts, Haig Burnell — 25 Jul 93. ABC Studio 520, Collinswood, South Australia