Commissioned Work: Old Music New Life
These 5 songs have been specially selected from the Commissioned Works that the Festival of Music bring life to. These songs are usually only sung once by the Festival Choirs, and never again – until now! Here are some of the favourites since 2000, and as we are now 25 years into the 21st Century, let’s celebrate by giving ‘new life’ to some ‘old music’.
Won't Look Down
From 2009 “Remember Me”.
Words and Music by J. Schumann. Arranged by G. Lehmann.
Have you ever wondered how the early explorers survived as they trekked through the middle of Australia? John McDouall Stuart sailed out from England and landed in Australia in 1839. He was a skinny little kid who only grew in height to 5 foot 6 inches. He demonstrated his strength and hardiness as one of Australia’s well-known explorers. He was a good mapper, went on many expeditions into the ‘outback’ with others and always treated his men equally regardless of their backgrounds, referring to them as his ‘companions’.
Stuart had an uncanny knack of finding water by following the direction of the flying birds. He loved the wandering life of an explorer and surveyor and achieved his ambitions of reaching the ‘very heart’ of Australia. He was the first to find the route from the south of the continent to the north – this is now named the Stuart Highway.
Staying positive, and ‘keeping your eyes on the horizon’ would have been a necessity when faced with the harsh Australian outback.
Read the story in Won’t Look Down, take yourself back in time and try to imagine the strength and resilience that these early Australian explorers had so you can sing with knowledge, emotion and understanding.
This SA Government website provides information to learn about Stuart’s interactions with Indigenous groups, and we recommend for teachers.
It includes appropriate warnings and notes, e.g. the historic use of the term ‘native’.
We tell the story / sing the song from the first-person perspective (it is up to teachers to lead the conversations around it) and the website invites discussion about:
- Why Stuart might have been attacked by Aboriginal groups – crossing tribal lands without knowing/permission
- How Stuart interacted with Aboriginal people about finding water
- Emphasising that different Aboriginal groups had already travelled from north-south and south-north for thousands of years and communicated in different ways across the continent, but Stuart was the first Scottish explorer to do so, because he wanted to win the government competition.