... and on earth, peace

Musical composition: The work …and on earth, peace for soprano soloist and unaccompanied chamber choir was composed by Carl Crossin for Adelaide Chamber Singers. It is a setting of the poem ‘Christmas Carols’ by English poet Patricia Beer. While accepting the inherent limitations of both music and poetry as independent artforms in conveying an agreed meaning, this work explores the concept of creating new meaning(s) through the juxtaposition of a literary text with musical material of both a sympathetic and a contrasting nature. This concept is further enhanced in this particular case by the existence of a similar juxtaposition of contrasting or opposing ideas within the poem itself. Two separate levels of ‘meaning’ exist therefore: one within the poem itself through the juxtaposition of short Latin liturgical phrases with couplets in English; and another through the juxtaposition of the poetical text with musical ideas that either (a) reinforce the original context of either the Latin or the English text, (b) reinforce the new meaning created by the poem’s juxtaposition, or (c) create another new meaning through sympathetic or unsympathetic juxtaposition of the poetry and the music. Although the poem references the events, traditions and Christian significance of Christmas in an oblique manner, the music itself distorts the textual ambiguity even further creating an even more disturbing narrative that hints at anything but ‘peace on earth’.