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- Ross Edwards
Flower Songs (1987)
- Wise Music G. Schirmer Australia Pty Ltd (World)
Click here to purchase performance materials at the Australian Music Centre Difficulty: Advanced — Professional/1st class amateur choir
Programme Note
Flower Songs is a choral maninya (dance/chant). Its text consists of the botanical names (in Latin and ancient Greek) of a selection of central eastern Australian wild flowers. Sir Jonathan Mills once summarised my attitude to word setting as being “averse to texts that are philosophical, psychological, dramatic or descriptive (and) only interested in ones that allow (him) to invoke some kind of timeless spirituality in setting them to music … (His) essential vocal style, most evident in the vocal maninyas and
Flower Songs, is characterised by modified repetition of rhythmic patterns centred on drones – a sort of hypnotic incantation.” Flower Songs is dedicated to Nicholas Routley who commissioned it, with Australia Council assistance, for the Sydney Chamber Choir. The work is in two movements: the first vigorous and ecstatic; the second hazy and dream-like.
Ross Edwards
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Features
- Choral Highlights 2022
- In recent months and for the season ahead the Wise Music choral catalogues are once again burgeoning with new works. There are new pieces and publications from Richard Allain, Peter Bruun, Britta Byström, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Matthew Martin, Paul Mealor, Nico Muhly, Owain Park, Joby Talbot and Judith Weir, plus new repertoire from recent Australian signing Ross Edwards.