MODART

Modart

MODART is a professional development project that provides opportunities for emerging composers to develop works for vocal ensemble, and which then receive public performance by The Song Company.

Biography: Joseph Twist

Joseph Twist is currently undertaking a PhD in Music Composition with an Australian Postgraduate Research Award under the supervision of Professor Philip Bracanin and Dr Richard Mills. Joseph was the recipient of the Percy Brier Memorial Prize in 2001, the Australian Voices Young Composer Award in 2003 and was the winner of the Chanticleer Student Composition Competition in 2003. His music has been performed widely by vocal and instrumental ensembles such as The Australian Voices, The Brisbane Chamber Choir, Canticum, Chanticleer, The Steve Martland Band and Orchestra Victoria. Joseph's music is published in Australia by Morton Music and in the United States by Hinshaw.

Program Notes: Love Themes

Love Themes is a set of ‘pseudo-madrigals’, each one discussing different themes of love in their respective texts. Although this music is clearly modern, there is at times an underlying influence of the madrigals from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first movement, Pain, is a setting of a poem by English poet Edward Thomas called Rain. Thomas writes of depression and solitude as he prays that no-one he has ever loved is dying or suffering in the way that he is suffering.

A much less melancholy love theme is depicted in Desire, a description of Cupid, the god of love according to Roman mythology. Cupid is in fact Latin for ‘desire’. The text used here is originally from the madrigal Oh Yes! Has Any Found a Lad? by Thomas Tomkins. This movement in particular draws on the attributes of the madrigal to paint the image of Cupid with his wings and bow and arrows as he stings his victims to make them fall in love. Finally, Beauty is a setting of His Beauty Sparkles by American poet Paul Goodman in which he expresses adoration for the beauty of a newborn baby.