Songs of Sea and Sky - Clarinet and Piano

Peter Sculthorpe's Songs of Sea and Sky for B-flat Clarinet and Piano accompaniment "...deserves attention from every self-respecting clarinettist ... the clarinet part sang the Torres Strait dance song from which the work is derived with a transcendent beauty suggesting a Mahlerian peace with the world."  - David Vance, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 1988

This work is one continuous movement consisting of seven parts.  It was inspired by a traditional melody from Saibai, an island just south of Papua New Guinea, in Torres Strait.  The melody was collected on Saibai by Jeremy Beckett in May 1961.  Although some traditional Torres Strait music still survives in its original form, most of that heard today is strongly influenced by the religious music introduced by missionaries in the nineteenth century.  nevertheless, its themes are still predomimantly of sea voyages, flights of birds and changes in sea and sky.

Commissioned by the Yale School of Music to mark the retirement of Keith Wilson