Upon the Dark Water
for vocal sextet or choir
SSATBB (1991)
duration: 9’
text by Ross Baglin
GRT • 012
CD available
The Green
CD
The Song Company, Roland Peelman (cond.)
Tall Poppies
audio sample
3: Cicada in the Blackbird's
Beak
score
available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
This set of three
pieces was commissioned and premiered by The Song Company
with assistance from the music Board of The Australia
Council. It is dedicated to Roland Peelman, conductor of
the premiere and first recording. The piece has also
enjoyed performances in the UK (Arcadian Singers) and the
US (Cantori New York).
article
available on resources
page
reviews
"Upon The Dark Water
by Stuart Greenbaum had much
to commend it, as a piece and as a performance. The young
Australian composer makes accomplished use of controlled
crescendi and diminuendi on close, gently dissonant harmony
and draws little agitated solos out from this texture. I
look forward to Greenbaum's next piece."
John
Carmody, Sun–Herald, July 1991
"Upon The Dark Water
by Stuart Greenbaum with
subtle allusive texts by Ross Baglin (receiving a first
performance) exploited a personal harmonic idiom. There
were passages of simple but effective inventiveness such as
some effectively handled sliding sustained tones."
Peter
McCallum, Sydney
Morning Herald,
July 1991
"Stuart
Greenbaum's Upon
The Dark Water contained original choral sonorities"
Peter
McCallum, Sydney
Morning Herald,
March 1993
"Equally convincing was Stuart
Greenbaum's Upon
the Dark Water.
This work was highly evocative in its use of bi–tonality to
set up what Greenbaum describes as 'floating sonorities'.”
Johanna
Selleck, The Herald
Sun, October
1997
text
3 nature poems in
the “Treasury Gardens” series
1
This
public figure, with its girdled statues
Of Burns, and Judges, and military men
Surrendered now to pigeons, and reduced
To quartered squares for clowning gulls and lunchers,
Still recalls with steepled English shadows,
The pruning of a colony ; enough then,
For shabby poets, clumsy lovers
And thin-lipped Cromwells in Sun-shingled towers
To note, at evening, how the tea-light brews
And new shoots nudge the moist light falling, falling,
Below the leafless circuit of the moon.
2
The
mother duck that chased at reeds
And fantasies of weightless things
That lurked in water, out of light,
Is menaced by the crevices
Of rocks that scour and foam ;
The water’s changing, and the growing ducks
She mothered in the teeth of Winter
Fledge in poison; No expression in the eye
Forgives their dying, no condolence comes
In leaves that break the clean white bones of sun
Upon the dark water.
3
A
spark of green spits and chirrs in the toed claw ;
The dipped spear clacks the tessellated shell,
The luculent green fans twirled,
The nerves cut, the netted wings wave
Unbidden circles, the clash of strings
Bewilders instinct, and the golden thighs
That rattled Summer nights are cracked,
Snap !
The flakes of flame smack in the scarlet beak.
The dismantling of a frail jewel
Will not be accounted in the published report
Of beauty’s ravished accessories,
Beauty does not stir when hunger’s march
Pounds sullen on;