Larry Sitsky: Deep In My Hidden Country - Introduction

Abstract

During 1983, when I was planning this work, I had just completed a new violin concerto (Gurdjieff: Violin Concerto No. 2) which had used as its basis folk music from Central Asia, and especially Armenia. I had found this raw material exciting and useful for my purposes, and had strong natural and instinctive affinities with the folk music itself. So, much of 1983 was spent searching and locating more grist for my mill. I actually considered literally thousands of Armenian folk melodies, and made the music through my own personal treatment and transformation. But the rich chromatic, rhapsodic and melismatic melodies allowed me to plan a whole series of new compositions, of which this is but one. The words came from Christopher Brennan, the most settable of Australian poets, and the score is dedicated to Jane Manning, that extraordinary English soprano with whom I had the pleasure of working some years back when she premiered my Music in the Mirabell Garden at the 1978 Adelaide Festival. The structure of the song cycle is somewhat unusual. Between the five settings from Brennan is inserted a Refrain, which, although vocally is very similar 'though never the same' is instrumentally quite different. Each Refrain, except the first and last, drawing on the previous song for its material. However, only the final Refrain is included on this recording. Show more