🏆 Winning composition of the 2019 Archbishop's Prize.
This piece was originally written for Sinfonia Australis, St Mary’s Cathedral Choir (Sydney), and their Director of Music Thomas Wilson.
It was awarded First Place in the 2019 Archbishop’s Prize for New Composers.
The text is by the celebrated Australian poet Les Murray:
The Iliad of peace began
when this girl agreed.
Now goats in trees, fish in the valley
suddenly feel vivid.Swallows flit in the stable as if
a hatchling of their kind,
turned human, cried in the manger
showing the hunger-diamond.Cattle are content that this calf
must come in human form.
Spiders discern a water-walker.
Even humans will sense the lamb,He who frees from the old poem
turtle-dove and snake
who gets death forgiven
who puts the apple back.Dogs, less enslaved but as starving
as the poorest humans there
crouch, agog at a crux of presence
remembered as a star.
This piece is available in both organ and orchestral editions.
🏆 Winning composition of the 2019 Archbishop's Prize.
This piece was originally written for Sinfonia Australis, St Mary’s Cathedral Choir (Sydney), and their Director of Music Thomas Wilson.
It was awarded First Place in the 2019 Archbishop’s Prize for New Composers.
The text is by the celebrated Australian poet Les Murray:
The Iliad of peace began
when this girl agreed.
Now goats in trees, fish in the valley
suddenly feel vivid.Swallows flit in the stable as if
a hatchling of their kind,
turned human, cried in the manger
showing the hunger-diamond.Cattle are content that this calf
must come in human form.
Spiders discern a water-walker.
Even humans will sense the lamb,He who frees from the old poem
turtle-dove and snake
who gets death forgiven
who puts the apple back.Dogs, less enslaved but as starving
as the poorest humans there
crouch, agog at a crux of presence
remembered as a star.
This piece is available in both organ and orchestral editions.
