Hrafnsöngvar - Ravensongs: A Glimpse of Iceland - June 24, 2025

Hrafnsöngvar - Ravensongs Composed 2001; World Premiere, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, October 29 2005Rosalind Page - MusicHrafn Andrés Harðarson - Texts  Australian Music Centrehttps://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/product/hrafnsoengvar-ravensongs-a-tone-poem-on-seven-texts-by-hrafn-andres-hardarson-escore Incidental MusicÓlafur Arnalds / Ljósið;    Eydís Evenson / Dagdraumur   1    In The Beginning  Darkness  Blue mantle  Black bordered    Vision    In the ocean  stars  medusae  Night pregnant  with darkness  2    Morning  Caught in the net  of the morning glare  Never reaching day:  night birds  beating  with both wings  blood  blood on their breasts  from their own claws  3   Birds Of Heaven  Notes from the Creator’s harp  glide above clouds  on feathered wings  below  ie in the air  like promises …  Tone-birds  on the ocean’s keyboard.  4    Life Itself (Hildur’s Dance)  Between heaven and ocean  our happiness:  Lands that ancestors saw  with birds and mountains  and rivers  flowing like time  Strange seed  of all time, all tide  rising and falling  resonating earth  rising and never ending  As far as the eye can see  the eye of god  All years  tears  are lost and disappear,  no, reappear  forever  in the eternal breath  between sea and sky  5    Prophecy  Evening birds  flee the day’s sadness  into the shadowed embrace  of night  there where I often  seek daydreams  like a fan-winged raven  seeks a prophecy  of a new day  like yesterday …  6    Rain Of Pearls  Tiny drop  tiny drop,  pearl amongst pearls  in your eye  a vision of your world  in your eye  an image of your god  7    O, Frón (Iceland), Your Mother …  Dead calm, flat  lies the ocean at ease  and stares deep, deep  into a sunny blue,  star-clear sky  that has always been  and that never sleeps …  Featherlight fingers of breeze  play  on bird-viols  mermaids dance  beneath an aeolian heaven  that never sleeps …  Lighthearted waves  aroused by the swell  play with cinders  from the sun  that never sleeps …  quiet snow, rain  or mystical mist  covering with a bare veil  the billowing sea  that never sleeps …  then up from the tormented silence  of sleeping Ægir  breaking its way  through green-deep waves  swelling, booming crested seas  of the violent ocean  that never sleeps …  a burning, glowing, raging river  of melting metal and bursting stones  ashgrey, black  screaming, bright  spitting oozing with urgent fury  to heaven  toward a burning sun  that never sleeps …  Your birth, my land,  was like a fatal disease  no-one welcomed you  but your mother, the ocean,  protects you and feeds you  and never, no, never she sleeps.  [email protected]