Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

I wrote the five songs Like Snow in 1997 for voice and piano, inspired by my lover of the late 1990s who said "Snow is my Valhalla!" In 2023, Anna Stoddart asked me to write a piece for the GCCO, featuring Gaynor Morgan, Karol Kovalich, and Margaret Curtis. I took the opportunity to arrange these songs, which are probably my most performed works, for the combination of soprano, solo cello, harp and strings. These two concerts present the premiere of this work.

The arrangement is of the first four of the five songs of the set. The poem of the first, The Rescue. Is by Seamus Heaney; the other three songs are to poems by Robert Graves. They are all love poems set either literally or metaphorically in a snowy European winter, and the first three hover in that ambiguous, liminal landscape between sleep and waking. My settings of those three are tender, delicate, and understated; the fourth, Black, is an impassioned recitative.

May 2024

— Nicholas Routley

Work Details

Year: 2023

Instrumentation: High voice, cello solo, harp, string orchestra.

Duration: 7 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Within this category, not especially difficult. The rhythm of the first song takes a bit of getting one's head around. The solo cello part and the harp part are moderately hard - the other string parts are not difficult

Contents note: 1. The Rescue -- 2. She tells her love -- 3 Like Snow -- 4. Black.

Dedication note: Dedicated to Gaynor Morgan

Commission note: Commissioned by Anna Stoddart for performance by Gold Coast Chamber Orchestra.

First performance: by Morgan Gaynor, Karol Kovalich, Margaret Curtis, Gold Coast Chamber Orchestra — 12 May 24. A&I Hall, Bangalow, NSW

The composer nots the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:

These songs are in the tradition of European art song