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Martin Wesley- Smith CHORAL MUSIC (selected) |
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vocal works |
chamber music |
tape pieces |
misc works |
| Martin Wesley-Smith | Tall Poppies Records | Quito | Boojum! |
scores, parts, CDs etc are available from The Australian Music Centre
most lyrics are by Peter Wesley-Smith
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from Fanfare, "The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors", USA, p99, Vol 16, No. 5, May/June 1993: | Your reward is learning about Boojum!, a "light-hearted but deadly-serious choral fantasy" ... (the authors) have fashioned an irresistible contemporary musical snark hunt ... subtitled "Nonsense, Truth, and Lewis Carroll", (it) is partly a psychological profile of the Reverend Charles Dodgson ... For heaven's sake, indulge yourself in Boojum! Sit down with the libretto in the jewel box when you can be uninterrupted for two hours and experience this grand entertainment ... |
index
| Boojum! | full-length work for soloists, choir, perc & pno |
| Black Ribbon | six singers, choir & orchestra |
| children's songs | for children to perform |
| doublethink | for six singers, a cappella |
| Lollipop Man | for five singers, a cappella |
| Lost in Space | for children to perform |
| Machine | for children to perform |
| Manners for Men | for secondary schools to perform | M. C. Pig |
| Pi in the Sky | opera for children to perform |
| Quito | |
| Several Australian Barbershop Quartets | male quartet, a cappella |
| Several Australian Conservation Songs | six voices, a cappella |
| Songs for Snark-Hunters | choir & pno |
| Songs of Australia | |
| Songs for Kids [SATB] | |
| Songs for Kids [SSA] | |
| Songs for Kids [SSATBarB] | |
| Thank Evans (Australian Foreign Policy & East Timor, 1975-1999) | SATB & piano |
| Three Shakespeare Songs | for choir, a cappella |
| Tiananmen Square | |
| True | deals with issues to do with being gay or lesbian |
| Walk in the Light | gospel |
| Who Killed Cock Robin? | a conservation piece, a classic |
| Wild West Show, The | for children to perform |
| David Vance, The Sydney Morning Herald, Mon June 29 1981: | |||
| "Martin Wesley-Smith's amusing polemic on the dangers of pesticides - Who Killed Cock Robin? - proved a clever piece of music theatre and black comedy: its catalogue of nasty chemicals in the woodshed is a particularly powerful piece of writing after the vampy torch song of a leggy caterpillar." | |||
| Roger Covell, The Sydney Morning Herald, Mon Nov 28 1983: | |||
| "Martin Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin?, a highly-eclectic show-piece and a riotous send-up carrying an environmental message for good measure ... this skilful and memorable piece ..." | |||
David Gyger, Opera Australia, August 1989:
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"In Boojum!, Songs for Snark-Hunters and Songs of Australia, the Wesley-Smiths have come up with a genuinely innovative, undemandingly popularist, satirical musical theatre genre that is unmistakably Australian and thoroughly entertaining; and one that is at the same time intermittently spiced with explicit concern for larger issues such as the environment, the Indonesian rape of East Timor and the absurd trivialising values of commercial television."
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The Alberta NEW MUSIC & ARTS REVIEW, (Canada), | Vol. I No. 2, Summer 1998/Spring 1999, pp.110-112:
about Quito: "a stylistically striking, and profoundly disturbing, postmodern collage ... beautifully reflects the essence of the real-life drama ... superbly put together ... a sonic landscape full of allusions, cross-references, widely differentiated styles ... and suddenly shifting textures - a truly 'schizophrenic' narrative, a tour de force of contemporary audio art ... A masterpiece."
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| choral works |
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Wish to order? Contact The Australian Music Centre
| Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald, Wed Sept 3 1997: |
FROM POLITICALLY CORRECT PARANOIA TO PROPHECY Songs of Australia Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir Sydney Town Hall, August 31 1997 It would be nice if Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith's Songs of Australia had become somewhat dated. Written in 1988 to inject some laconic irony into that year's uncritical nationalism, it used musical cliche to serve up to us the non-news stories of that year - the things that weren't OK, such as racism, materialism, homophobia, anti-intellectualism and subservience to media and cultural oligarchies. Unfortunately the irony has, if anything, sharpened. And what a shame, as Martin Wesley-Smith said in his spoken introduction, that the ABC Song was omitted from this condensed version. Since then, what seemed like paranoia has proved to be prophecy and much of that which was politically correct in 1988 has become historically correct in 1997. A shame, then, that it demands not updating, but simply repeating ... |
| index | the works |
| Martin Wesley-Smith | Peter Wesley-Smith |
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mw-s works: |
Quito |
Boojum! |
Cock Robin |
Mrs H Remembers |
X |
Manners for Men
mw-s discography | articles, letters etc (re East Timor, Conservatorium) |
March 8 2007