Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

"According to German legend, there was once a beautiful young maiden, named Lorelei, who threw herself headlong into the river in despair over a faithless lover. Upon her death she was transformed into a siren and could from that time on be heard singing on a rock along the Rhine River, near St. Goar. Her hypnotic music lured sailors to their death. The legend is based on an echoing rock with that name near Sankt Goarshausen, Germany." (Micha F. Lindemans - http://www.pantheon.org/articles/l/lorelei.html)

Lorelei is Germany's most famous ghost. In his eponymously named poem (from Selected Poems 1956-1994, Oxford: OUP, 1995, p. 84), Chris Wallace-Crabbe has Australianised her. Instead of lurking about rocks along the Rhine River, she can be spotted on the highway from Bordertown to Nhill, or in Gippsland, or along the Great Divide. Instead of sailors, her prey are drivers from whom she hitches a lift, and whom she renders "spooked as hell". Unlike the ill-fated sailors in the German legend, these drivers can potentially escape their doom - so long as they follow the advice in the poem…

Work Details

Year: 2004

Instrumentation: SSA choir, piano.

Duration: 9 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Commissioned by Young Voices of Melbourne with funds provided by Arts Victoria.

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc associated with this work:
postmodernism