Sonata for Cello and Piano
‘Another Earth’ (2018)
duration: 32’
GRT • 201
YouTube
score available from
Australian Music Centre
program note
This Sonata for Cello and Piano is written for the Australian National Academy of Music as part of the Greenbaum Sonata Project (low string sonatas). It is the 12th in a series of sonatas written in the new millennium. The work is around half an hour in duration, cast in a single movement. The premiere performance was given by Caleb Murray and Peter de Jager on 25 October 2019 at South Melbourne Town Hall, ANAM.
The subtitle, Another Earth, refers to the so-called habitable zone where a planet might be just the right distance from a given sun; neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water, and therefore able to sustain life. It’s an amazing thought, but also an unsettling one. In writing this work, I had in front of me 3 different artist impressions of what these planets might look like (including Kepler 22B and Kepler 186f). I don’t write on this topic thinking human life on Earth is certainly doomed, though we assume its continuity at our peril. Imagining alternatives hopefully strengthens our resolve to maintain Earth’s life-supporting qualities.