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Home / Compositions / A Pitch Dark Night

A Pitch Dark Night (2014)

4 minutes
for baritone, piccolo, trumpet and piano

Text: Arthur Taylor, from his Gallipoli diary

First performance by David Greco (baritone), David Shaw (piccolo), Leanne Sullivan (trumpet), James Huntingford (piano), conducted by Roland Peelman, Canberra International Music Festival, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 8 May 2015

Buy Score (AMC) Listen on SoundCloud

Program note

Andrew Ford: A Pitch Dark Night (2014) for baritone, piccolo, trumpet and piano

This piece is a setting of words from the Gallipoli diary of Arthur Taylor, a private in the 4th Light Horse Regiment.

A pitch dark night and you standing in a narrow trench just wide enough to stop your shoulders from rubbing the sides, you can only see a handsbreadth in front of your face you hear the hiss of bullets passing overhead you cannot strike a match as the flare might cost one of your mates his life you move silently along past the Officer on Duty he is muffled up to the eyes for the cold is bitter you look on one platform and there is the machine gun stripped of his outer casing ready to deal out death to any Turks that try to rush our trench we were only 40 yards apart.

Taylor, A H Manuscript held at the State Library of Victoria MS 12286

© A.F.

Instrumentations: Vocal, Voice and ensemble

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