Australian Spirituality: Iain Grandage, Composer

Iain Grandage’s Anthem “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” :an Australian ‘bearer’ of spirituality. Elizabeth Sheppard (Catholic Institute of Sydney) 2002

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Iain Grandage (b.1970), an Australian poet and composer, composed and published “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church” 1 in 1998. It was performed by the University of Newcastle Chamber Choir on 29th April, 2001, under the direction of Philip Matthias, in Canterbury Cathedral for the Guild of Church Musicians (UK) Millenium Celebration, and during the choir’s subsequent tour of the UK.

This attractive and original work attracted great interest in the UK because it interprets and communicates the specifically Australian experience of a bush church community, in sung English, fragments of Aboriginal language, and sung vocables. The a capella arrangement of the text echoes and illustrates the sounds, timbres and colonial settler experiences of the Australian bush.

Hush : On the Death of a Bush Church (Iain Grandage, 1998) Hush, hush, hush as daylight melts away. This place is of treasure made – Glint of gold, or dreamtime of faith. Laga-nu paipa kunai wanana ngai-gar Mai-a mai ulaipa Jewels of metal and of soul – For them ‘tis dreams of ages past For us ‘tis tales of gold. Stone on stone we thus did build, natives fled, others killed. Spirit for them disappeared, their land and dreamtime cut and cleared… But at least our castle stood on Rock of Ages, sound and good. Hush. Harsh. Hush. Parched. Hush, hush, hush. Flies and heat we stumble through to find a strike that only few will find.

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Grandage, Iain, “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” Verse Anthem. In Journey of Celebration, CD, Track 2, Side 2. Sung by the University of Newcastle Chamber Choir at Canterbury Cathedral, UK, for the Guild of Church Musicians’ Millenium Celebration, UK, 2001. CRCD2001, Chartreuse.

Iain Grandage’s Anthem “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” :an Australian ‘bearer’ of spirituality. Elizabeth Sheppard (Catholic Institute of Sydney) 2002

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For gold we dig all day, no time for thirst, no time to find a way to live with owners past of land, the land we dig and pan in search of gold – the yellow dust that has its hold on ev’ry one of us. Mai-a, ngai-gar mai-a Our picks we drop to sever rocks from hills, land which no longer lives in dreamtime vision or in spirit, its sole purpose is to give us gold, but gold is running dry and makes us question why we live in this forsaken place of flies and heat, ‘tis just a place to die. Picks we lift and drop them. I made my fortune in a day and blued it in a week! Our rock of ages may live on without us, for we now are gone. There is no gold on which to live; golden country cannot give us more if there’s no more to find, but holes in earth will all remind you of your lives and those we crushed… Hush, hush, hush. Silent now she sleeps, stone on stone – rubble of a dream. Cloaked in sand – yet who weeps unseen? This place of treasure no-one wants to know Both jewels lost their real hearts long ago.

In 2001 the University of Newcastle Chamber Choir consisted of twenty-one dedicated young Australian choristers under the direction of Philip Matthias. Their enthusiastic participation contributed to and affirmed the spiritual energy of this work. The anthem has unquestionably proven its worth as a dramatic, moving bearer of Australian spirituality. The historical and spiritual dilemma of Australian colonial pioneers was given voice by contemporary Australians, singing to the UK descendants of those responsible for the Australian colonial debacle. This anthem facilitated a civilized and constructive spiritual dialogue by attending to the uniqueness of the Australian experience. In performance, the anthem combines living Australian emotions, intellect and artistic action in an expressive display of the Australian psyche which requires disciplined teamwork, musical expertise and affective interpretation.

Iain Grandage’s Anthem “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” :an Australian ‘bearer’ of spirituality. Elizabeth Sheppard (Catholic Institute of Sydney) 2002

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The text opens with a statement from an attentive observer of the scene, who is drawn into the historical bush scenario through the attunement of an Aboriginal voice. The subjective and objective, the kataphatic (sensual experience) and the apophatic (descent into no-place), are both expressed in this work through the contrast between two styles – short, slow, hymn-like sections, and frantic rapid narrative recitatives overlaid with multiple-entry fugue or polyphonic lamentation. In this text and music, the spirit resides where words fail and inarticulacy, dissonance or Aboriginal lament takes over, and it retreats altogether from the hectic activity of the builders in stone and the golddiggers. Its spiritual structure is therefore opposite to that of traditional European vocal music, where spiritual presence is invariably allied to articulacy and verbal precision.

The text is freely composed in colloquial but not idiosyncratic language, moving through the settlers’ experience of destroying the Aboriginals and the dreaming, churchbuilding, and gold-digging, in the first person. We hear confident and bereft voices, snatches of hymns and stuttering counterpoint, voices from beyond time and present ones.

The choral commentary of “hush” acquires gradually modified vowels and

develops to “crushed”, acting as a Greek chorus to the unfolding tragedy. The settlers’ preoccupation with hard work, the establishment of a lasting monument, and the pursuit of gold, becomes all-consuming and chaotic. Their muddled weariness and frustrated enslavement to gold, the “yellow dust”, becomes evident through the panicky music. The full range of expressive vocal pitch, dynamics and rhythm is explored, going beyond the merely conventional into stranger places, into the dissonant ecological landscape of the Australian bush, inhabited by the relentless heat of the sun, buzzing flies, droning insects and Aboriginal voices. The sustained physical and mental effort entailed in performing this work forms part of its spirituality. Australian performers empathize with the tragic experience of the bush church community, and with the Aboriginals who lost their dreaming and their land, as they conduct, sing and play.

Iain Grandage’s Anthem “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” :an Australian ‘bearer’ of spirituality. Elizabeth Sheppard (Catholic Institute of Sydney) 2002

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The principal theme of the anthem is the contrast between the two symbolic treasures of Australia – gold and the dreaming – the “jewels of metal and of soul.” The settlers’ hardheaded preference for material wealth over the treasure of the soul’s dreaming which awaited them (repeatedly offered in fragments of quasi-Aboriginal chant, but ignored), leads to dire consequences. The conclusion the Australian poet reaches, that “both jewels lost their real hearts long ago”, has been coloured by years of English immigrant supposition that all Australian Aboriginal cultures were inevitably doomed to die out as a consequence of English settlement. This is how it appeared to the many colonial settlers who built bush churches and later abandoned them when the gold ran out. Many Aboriginal clans did suffer total extinction as the settlers deliberately killed them and took their land, but numerous tribes retained enough population and culture to establish land claims and revive the dreaming. In 1998, when this anthem was written, many Australians were still under the impression that all Australian Aboriginal cultures would inevitably fade away, as the terrible Australian Aboriginal deaths in custody statistics increased, therefore this work has a strong character of grieving.

In the year 2008, Australians are fully aware that many Australian Aboriginal cultures have survived and are flourishing. But this memorial anthem is still viable as a poignant reflection on and interpretation of the dilemma of the majority of the first generation of colonial settlers who found themselves caught between two cultures, unable to let go of their old values, enslaved to endless toil, deaf to the Aboriginal song which could have saved them, and unable to adapt to their new environment. It recognizes that only an Aboriginal voice can attune immigrants to the Australian Aboriginal land and its meaning for them. It is an anthem of truth and reconciliation and a call to conversion, because it acknowledges the “whispering in the heart’, the lingering guilt over the suffering of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples, which many Australians cannot address without the spiritual help offered by attending to music of this kind. It has emerged directly from rural Australia, where elderly people still hold memories of similar scenarios, and whisper among themselves about them, so it is also a means of healing.

Iain Grandage’s Anthem “Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church.” :an Australian ‘bearer’ of spirituality. Elizabeth Sheppard (Catholic Institute of Sydney) 2002

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The anthem succeeds through redundancy, not by baldly stating the truth, but by anxious, hurried, forcibly dramatic, but embarrassed, revelatory narrative. It succeeds, paradoxically, by ‘shushing’, and by melodic laments which communicate poignant sorrow, regret, and finally a reflective acceptance linked to hope in the descending lament of the Aboriginal voice, since descent in Australian Aboriginal song indicates drawing closer to the earth-spirit ancestors. The music and text communicates an authentic Australian spirituality because it is grounded in the retrospective present, succeeds in illuminating the past, and subtly connects us to a more hopeful future. This future will perhaps discard the illusive dream of gold which in this case led not to a sure and solid Rock of Ages, but to spiritual and material disaster for the settlers. The fact that Australian Aboriginal spirituality in many cases actually survived attempted extermination by the colonial settlers, seems even more of a miracle when one considers the self-righteousness and utter blindness of most Australian Christian bush settlers (as portrayed here) to the spiritual and physical harm they inflicted on the Australian land, its original peoples, and on themselves. The spiritual effect of this anthem is very similar to that of Shelley’s Ozymandius, applied to the Australian situation - what once was though to be grand and heroic, is ultimately reduced to dust.