Prodigal Country

For Lilburn’s only full-length choral work, Prodigal Country, the composer set three poems to music – Robin Hyde’s Journey from New Zealand, Allen Curnow’s New Zealand City and Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. Across a single, winding movement, Prodigal Country conjures nostalgia and strangeness through its sung text and drifting melodic contours. The imagery of the river dominates the work, which, for Lilburn, seemed to represent freedom, while elsewhere Hyde’s evocative landscape is rugged and harsh, Curnow’s text emphasises the hesitancy and unease reminiscent of the Depression and Whitman’s romanticism is celebrated through Lilburn’s lyrical, melodic treatment.