Henry Lawson: A Life in Words & Music

Abstract

Schumann has lifted Lawson’s rhythms and rhymes into the 21st century. He gives them a new, exciting and urgent pressure the likes of which they must have had in the 1880s and ‘90s. Lawson’s poems have been set to music before this — but never with such an intuitive and dramatic understanding. In all these songs Lawson’s nineteenth century imaginative vision is brought respectfully into our time. Not only does the poetry survive the journey, you would think Lawson had written it with us in mind.