Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

The Crux, more commonly known as the Southern Cross, is a cross- shaped constellation most easily visible from the southern hemisphere, south of the 35th parallel.

The Southern Cross is composed of five primary stars in the Southern Sky; Alpha Crucis, Beta Crucis, Gamma Crucis, Delta Crucis, and Epsilon Crucis. These names utilise the first five letters of the Greek Alphabet, άλφα, βήτα, γάμα, δέλτα and έψιλον. In the Modern English (Latin) alphabet, these letters are most often assigned to A, B, G, D, and E. Such letters also happen to be represented as musical pitch classes, a series of pitches with the same letter name.

Nocturne for a Southern Cross makes use of these five pitch classes and their separate harmonic series to construct a musical illustration of the Southern Cross. The piece freely deviates and returns to these pitches to facilitate a celestial exploration of time and space through the sound of a solo violin.

Throughout, we hear sparkling and meditative moments of artificial and natural harmonics, reflecting the shimmer of the stars, and soaring melodies carrying us between them.

The work was composed for brilliant violinist and dear friend, Robert Smith.

Work Details

Year: 2023

Instrumentation: Violin.

Duration: 6 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Dedication note: to my friend, Robert Smith

First performance: by Robert Smith — 3 May 23. St Jude's Bowral