Waldheim Songs (2022)

Waldheim Songs are settings of three texts related to the Austrian botanist Gustav Weindorfer (1874-1932), who, with his wife Kate Cowle (1863-1916), founded Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania, Australia. Gustav and Kate loved the Tasmanian highlands and decided to build a chalet where they could host visiting botanists, naturalists, and biologists, and show them the wonders of the flora and fauna. They named the chalet “Waldheim”; wald being German for ‘forest,’ heim meaning ‘home.’ After Kate’s early death, Gustav continued living at Waldheim, hosting and guiding visitors around the valley and mountain, and successfully petitioning the state government to name the area as a national park for all to enjoy. The texts of these songs are gleaned from Kate Legge’s book about the Weindorfers: Kindred (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2019). Gustav recited Henry Longfellow’s Suspiria upon seeing the cliffs and glaciers around Crater Lake. A visit to Waldheim by Arthur Hackett in 1923 inspired a humorous diary entry about the endless rain, and some sage words from St Francis of Assisi in memory of Gustav, whose eulogy describes him as having befriended “birds and beasts, possums, bush mice, and two currawongs that he’d fed from his kitchen door.” (Legge, 210) Waldheim Songs was commissioned by the Weindorfer Memorial Committee, Wilmot, Cradle Mountain, to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Gustav’s death. Premiered by Quin Thomson, soprano, and David Malone, guitar.

Instrumentation: soprano and guitar

Duration: approx. 7 1/2 minutes