Our Duty to Care (2023), 18’, song cycle for soprano & piano trio
World premiere performance by Bridgette Kelsey & Solstice Trio (Isabel Hede guest vln., Stephanie Arnold cel., & Georgina Lewis pn.), text by Savanna Wegman.
World Premiere Performance @ Hanson-Dyer Hall, Ian Potter Southbank Centre, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music on 19/04/23 in ‘Our Duty to Care’. Curated and directed by Robert McIntyre and supported by his 2022-23 Wattle Fellowship (also viewable on YouTube below).
Our Duty to Care (2023), 18’, song cycle for soprano & piano trio composed as part of a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship, written for Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio (Georgina Lewis, Stephanie Arnold & guest Isabel Hede), with newly commissioned text by poet Savanna Wegman.
INSIGHT:
Our Duty to Care is a cross-disciplinary music composition based on the legal case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, where eight Australian teenagers (namely Anjali Sharma and Isolde Raj-Seppings, Ambrose Hayes, Tomas Arbizu, Bella Burgemeister, Laura Kirwan, Ava Princi & Luca Saunders) represented by an octogenarian nun (Sister Marie Brigid Arthur) as their litigation guardian, sued the Minister for the Environment (Cth). They successfully argued that the Minister owed them and other Australian children a duty of care, which was supposedly breached when the Minister approved the extraction of coal from a coal mine.
Whilst this decision was later successfully appealed by the Minister, this case monumentally established that climate change is legally real – with all submitted scientific evidence uncontested. This denotes a significant shift, as we are no longer fighting to prove our climate crisis, but rather urging all to fight the crisis itself.
This work sets newly commissioned text by poet, close friend & regular collaborator Savanna Wegman, who has re-interpreted my own legal research about the case into a 3- part poem, which has in turn structured the song cycle. It embodies climate anxiety, the nervous excitement of the trial and its success, and the melancholic yet hopeful transference of ideology: how far we’ve come & how far we still have left to go.
Timing: ~ 18 minutes
1: Robed in Apocalypse (~6min)
2: they will rise, as birds fall (~5min)
3: The Changing Wilds (~7min)
Written for Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio (Georgina Lewis, Stephanie Arnold & guest Isabel Hede). Dedicated to all current and future generations of Australians who inherit a climate crisis.
Acknowledgements to: Sincerest thank you and gratitude to Savanna Wegman, Bridgette Kelsey, Georgina Lewis, Isabel Hede, Stephanie Arnold, Lucinda McIntyre & the rest of my family, Katy Abbott, Anne Cawrse, Ella Macens, Stuart Greenbaum, Linh Do, Helen Shen, Crystal Tang and the 2022/23 Wattle Fellowship Cohort, Brad Jessup & the Melbourne Law School, Christine Pan, Alex Vlant, Liv Jackson, Sam Williams, Tom Mutimer, Laura Abraham, Amelia Jones, Natasha Conrau, Mireille Stahle, Merryn Hughes & The Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, Lep Beljac & The University of Melbourne and many more for your support in undertaking this substantial composition and endeavour.
Composed as part of and made possible by a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship.
“The Wattle Fellowship is a year-long leadership development program for students at the University of Melbourne. We aim to build leadership skills, support action on sustainability and create a cohort of leaders with the skills and networks to create positive lasting social and environmental impact. Fellows will participate in retreats, workshops, events and have the opportunity to implement their own action project.
Our vision is a world where Wattle Fellows are embedding sustainability practices and principles into every social endeavour. This program is made possible through philanthropic support, including the McCall MacBain Foundation.”
Our Duty to Care © Robert McIntyre 2023 www.roberttmcintyre.com
Score available for purchase at the Australian Music Centre: HEREALL CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT TO HUGO BEGG
COVER ART ILLUSTRATION © LUCINDA MCINTYRE
PROGRAMME ILLUSTRATION © CRYSTAL TANG
SOLSTICE TRIO (guest Isabel Hede, Stephanie Arnold, Georgina Lewis) & BRIDGETTE KELSEY
COMPOSER ROBERT MCINTYRE & POET SAVANNA WEGMAN
‘Prophecy, as a fire comes’ by Savanna Wegman © 2022
Text used for 1: Robed in Apocalypse
No more prophecy
until the sky begets a softer
Everlasting sun
or
the youth unravel
braided darkness
rushing innocence
all over Earth
Shadows designed
for our tired birth places
ghosting the new life
upon babbling breaths
And so the young are born
New guardians
Robed in
Apocalypse
Text used for 2: they will rise, as birds fall
Know they will rise
As disappearance is written
on ancient weather
become beast
She watches above
as birds fall
out of the mother sky
March into the high courts
of creators and destroyers
Anjali Sharma and the army
Future keepers
Enter this laced arena
burning horizons in their bellies
The Minister surveys the gravity
how deep we may breathe
how quickly we will fall
when the Earth veins split
and the sanctuary howls
at its open flesh
The weather sounds like a whisper
in these walls that stand for justice
Lay down a pocketful
of bird bones
of poison oceans
Text used for 3: The Changing Wilds
They speak for the
forgotten
Their ancestral home-body
Their drowning, burning worlds
for their lands that have lost hope
together their voices are louder
Becoming suns
Becoming rains
Becoming rivers multiplied
Becoming the skyward call
of protection
this call
Is honoured
the duty of care rewritten
A first for acknowledging
the changing wilds
Evidence now held
in palms that believe in
collapse
and might begin to
listen
Blessing the horror
with a soft breath of courage
Remember how
young sacred tears
are greeting Earth
like miracle seeds
OUR DUTY TO CARE | WORLDS COLLIDE
TEMPO RUBATO | 03/02/2024 (SOLD OUT)
CURATED BY ROBERT MCINTYRE, WITH BRIDGETTE KELSEY (SOP.), ISABEL HEDE (VLN.), STEPHANIE ARNOLD (CEL.) & GEORGINA LEWIS (PN.)
