Five Tales of Human Endeavour
for solo guitar
(2005)
duration: 10’
GRT • 115
audio sample
1: Yellow Canary
4:
Into the
Forest
score
available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
These five
miniatures were written for Keith Abbott and commissioned
by Katy Abbott. Guitarist, Ken Murray, annotated the score
(fingerings) and gave the first broadcast of the 4th
miniature in 2007.
1: Yellow Canary. A bird traditionally taken down into the
coal mines as a safety warning system. In Victoria, it is
also a small yellow sticker affixed to the windscreen of a
car which has been deemed by the police to be
un–roadworthy.
2: Eleven months at
sea. After
circumnavigating the world non–stop in a small boat,
18–year–old Jesse Martin remarked that he had missed
certain things – “things we take for granted now, which is
probably a bit obvious, human contact, eye contact, you
know, affection…good food.”
3: Light, sweet crude
is a type of petroleum. Oil is
big business and crude oil is the world's most actively
traded commodity. It is ‘crude’ assumedly because it is
unrefined. But ‘light’ and ‘sweet’? The mind boggles.
4: Into the Forest
relates to desertion during
the American Civil war. Huge numbers of troops (around
390,000) from both sides simply dropped their guns and fled
into the forest. Many, of course, were caught by their own
side and regulation demanded that they be shot. It is
understandable though, that the forest must have seemed a
haven – not only from the ‘enemy’ but also from one’s own
army.
5: The Thin Blue Line
is a description of the
Earth’s ozone layer as seen from space. It is a relatively
thin layer – part of a system that allows for life on
planet Earth.