Mind is a short work for choir and piano that was commissioned by St Peter’s Lutheran College, Brisbane for the St Peter’s Chorale (Kathryn Morton, conductor) for their 2019-20 European tour. The work was composed at La Résidence Mont-Blanc, Chamonix, France in February-March 2019.

The work is a setting of my own text – a short poem that celebrates the power and resilience of the human mind with its unstoppable energy and irrepressible desire to create. The poem seemed especially suited to a piece for young voices as each generation brings new imagination and optimism to the endless challenges of life on earth.

In Mind, the piano provides continual energy and drive. It leads melodic lines and is rhythmically alive with its fast patterns. The voices circle around the text and break it down into tiny fragments playing with the bubbling, fizzing energy provided by the piano and the poem.

Text:

Inside each mind there is light

Within the light there is idea

Within the idea there is a word:

And the word is hope.

© Andrew Schultz, 2019