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Ab Estatis Foribus
(At the Gates of Summer) (1979)
for mixed choir
Ross Edwards
These five Latin songs for unaccompanied mixed choir were commissioned for
the Sydney Chamber Choir by Nicholas Routley, to whom they are dedicated.
The choir gave the first performance in 1980 at Pearl Beach, a coastal village
north of Sydney where my family and I spent seven idyllic years (1978-84).
(My wife, Helen, used to organise concerts in the village hall).
All except the fourth song - the Hymnus ante Somnum by Aurelius Prudentius
Clemens (348-c.405 AD) - are settings of 13th century lyrics from the manuscript
of Benedictbeuren, Upper Bavaria, which was discovered in the Munich Hof-Bibliothek
early in the 19th century. These lyrics are concerned with the coming of
Spring and its attendant joys and pains of love: the pain of unrequited
love is expressed in the second setting, for soprano and alto, while the
hymn of Prudentius is a meditation on the healing power of sleep.
The settings are straightforwardly tuneful with a distinctly archaic quality
and a strong element of pastiche. Ab Estatis Foribus is one of the very
few works of mine that has no (conscious) reference to Australia, the Pacific
or South East Asia.
Ross Edwards
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