Based on the autobiographical novel by T.G.H. Strehlow with a libretto by Gordon Kalton Williams.
First performance: by David Porcelijn, Rodney Macann, David Bruce, John Stanton, Aaron Pedersen, Sydney Symphony, Sydney Philharmonia Motet Choir, Ntaria Ladies Choir, John Wregg — 28 May 2003. Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House.
'This essay uses the 2003 symphonic Cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend to examine some of the different entangled memories of German missionisation in Central Australia, including those held by the settler-European librettist Gordon Kalton Williams and members of the Indigenous Ntaria community choir, among others. Rather than simply reading this as a pernicious settler-Australian appropriation of Aboriginal culture, or as a simple story of harmonious intercultural collaboration, the author seeks to open up the multiplicity of meanings – the consonances, as well as the ambiguities and the disconcerting moments of (Publication abstract)uncanniness and clash that lie beneath the surface of a musical act of memory.'
'This essay uses the 2003 symphonic Cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend to examine some of the different entangled memories of German missionisation in Central Australia, including those held by the settler-European librettist Gordon Kalton Williams and members of the Indigenous Ntaria community choir, among others. Rather than simply reading this as a pernicious settler-Australian appropriation of Aboriginal culture, or as a simple story of harmonious intercultural collaboration, the author seeks to open up the multiplicity of meanings – the consonances, as well as the ambiguities and the disconcerting moments of (Publication abstract)uncanniness and clash that lie beneath the surface of a musical act of memory.'