🏆 Winning composition of the 2026 Ralph Morton Memorial Competition supported by the National Youth Choir of Australia
While Henry Lawson is best known for his laconic humour and unsparing portraits of hardship, After All reveals a more introspective meditation on hope, regret, and perseverance.
This setting for SATB double choir opens with a wind-like call evoking the Australian outback, gradually giving way to Lawson’s reflections on life.
The music traces the text’s shifting balance between guarded optimism and quiet doubt, framed by recurring statements of the unifying refrain, ‘after all’.
This work offers singers the opportunity to explore a wide range of textures across eight vocal parts with a brief tenor duet in the final stanza.
The double choir voicing functions as a broad palette for tutti unisons, intricate polyphony, thick harmonic devices, and pairings across voice types.
A piano reduction is provided for rehearsal purposes.
Singers should be positioned as two separate choir blocks to take full advantage of the antiphonal effects between Choir I and Choir II.
🏆 Winning composition of the 2026 Ralph Morton Memorial Competition supported by the National Youth Choir of Australia
While Henry Lawson is best known for his laconic humour and unsparing portraits of hardship, After All reveals a more introspective meditation on hope, regret, and perseverance.
This setting for SATB double choir opens with a wind-like call evoking the Australian outback, gradually giving way to Lawson’s reflections on life.
The music traces the text’s shifting balance between guarded optimism and quiet doubt, framed by recurring statements of the unifying refrain, ‘after all’.
This work offers singers the opportunity to explore a wide range of textures across eight vocal parts with a brief tenor duet in the final stanza.
The double choir voicing functions as a broad palette for tutti unisons, intricate polyphony, thick harmonic devices, and pairings across voice types.
A piano reduction is provided for rehearsal purposes.
Singers should be positioned as two separate choir blocks to take full advantage of the antiphonal effects between Choir I and Choir II.
