This work was originally composed as a ballet, which was to be part of a show for the Red Cross in wartime Adelaide. The commission fee did not, however, eventuate, and the ballet was never choreographed.
Miriam Hyde wrote to her husband Marcus Edwards on 24 January 1943 (he was then a POW in Germany): ‘I’ve done quite a bit of work on my ballet this week, and now have about 9 minutes’ worth of piano score, the characters of pie-man, flower-girl, gypsy, and hurdy-gurdy man being interspersed with variations on ‘O dear what can the matter be’. It will be nice to score, as the ideas have come to me in non-pianistic idiom, for a start. I’d like one or two more characters, and wish you could suggest some, darling. My friends suggest coconut shy, world’s biggest man, etc., but such concepts would ruin my composition as a piece of independent music, which I hope it may be!’
| Verlag: | Wirripang (2023) |
| Besetzung: | Sr-2222-2210-11 (Pic) Trgl Cim Kast BDr Tamb Xyl |