Work Overview
Ross Edwards, whose Lux Aeterna is the climax of The
Diggers' Requiem, a composite work by Australian composers
premiered in Llewellyn Hall on October 2017, has always wanted
his music to act as an agent of healing and ritual - an important
part of its age-old universal function.
"I see my Lux Aeterna as a prayer for peace," he says.
"I was drawn to John Grant's Lament for the Pipers Lost in the
Great War because it seemed to me to be an archetypal lamentation
which resonated with my Scottish ancestry.
The combination of using it as a cantus firmus for the setting of
the Lux Aeterna Latin text (in English - Eternal Light) and the
sounding of the 62,000 bells for the 62,000 Australian WW1 dead,
which form a halo around the piece, has given the work a mythic
power".
Christopher Latham
Work Details
Year: 2017
Instrumentation: SATBar choir, solo trumpet, solo accordion, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bassoon, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets in C, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (4 players), bagpipes, strings, 62,000 recorded bell sounds.
Duration: 11 min.
Subjects
- Has as subject/About: Centenary of World War I
Performances of this work
6 Oct 2018: at The Diggers' Requiem (Llewellyn Hall ANU School of Music). Featuring The Australian War Memorial Orchestra & Choir, Chris Latham.
27 Sep 2018: at The Diggers' Requiem Brass (Pitt Street Uniting Church).
26 Sep 2018: at Diggers' Requiem Brass (St Paul's Cathedral (Melbourne)).
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