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Work Overview
My 2022 composition This Wide Quietness is a very personal work. Guitarist Grant Sambells had suggested the idea of an Australian piece as an initial thematic springboard, and what immediately came to mind was a 2021 trip I made to Carnarvon Gorge for my honeymoon. Approximately 700 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, it's an incredibly beautiful place, and also an incredibly spiritual one, too; the traditional owners of the land (the Bidjara, Karingbal, and Kara Kara people) left thousands of ancient ochre stencils in areas now known as the Art Gallery and Cathedral Cave, and these areas retain a remarkable sense of power and history.
In This Wide Quietness, I tried to reflect at least a fraction of the calm intensity of the area. An unusual scordatura (retuning) of the sixth string to E-flat opens up clusters of floating chords, as well as unison harmonics across multiple strings. The title of the piece is taken from John Keats' poem Ode to Psyche; a pun on my partner's work, it's equally a phrase that describes the mood of Carnarvon Gorge. The poem concludes "And there shall be for thee all soft delight/that shadowy thought can win,/A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,/To let the warm Love in!".
Work Details
Year: 2022
Instrumentation: Guitar.
Duration: 6 min.
Difficulty: Advanced
Commission note: Commissioned by Western Sydney University.
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