The Final Hour (2013)
(for studio orchestra, narrator and electronics)

“The Final Hour is an album for our times, if ever there was one. Each piece is metronomically timed in such a way that the Fibonacci series is duplicated on each side, like mirrored images of a nautilus shell. The total running time is, of course, a precise hour. There’s something unique about this album – as though all that has come before was designed to arrive here in the musical interaction between those involved in it.

‘Fate’ is a perfect partnership between text and music, where one never overshadows the other, where the text becomes music and the music, text. There is space in this piece because there is time, thirteen minutes of it, and thus room to explore, grow and meander. The most evocative aspects of the music are the simplest. The use of solo instruments prominently placed in front of sound walls features effectively throughout. This is most perfectly illustrated in the gorgeous ‘Thistle Seed’.

The music in ‘Atmosphere’ is of hope, enduring hope with its cyclic glockenspiel and effervescent rhythm. That has always been music’s charter, so obvious also, at this actual moment in time. In this brief finale we are brought full circle, with greater musical warmth and an emphatic major tonal resolution. It ultimately demonstrates Greenbaum’s optimistic view from all the times and places he explores.

As one who loves a great interplay between the connotation of words with both complementary and contradictory musical meanings, this album is utterly immersive. And throughout, one can hear the dedication to this project in all the performances. It really is a wonderful work.”

“Stuart Greenbaum is Professor and Head of Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. He has written works in genres ranging from sonata to opera, but with The Final Hour he has engaged with the idea of the concept album beloved by ‘progressive rock’ musicians of the 1970s. The concept in Greenbaum’s composition is an examination of the ‘perception of the passing of time’, and how we value it, in our hectic 21st century lives. It is communicated through a combination of words and music, and a structure which is determined by the Fibonacci series on both macro and micro levels.

The text is a 500-word poem by Greenbaum’s long-time collaborator Ross Baglin and is narrated by John Stanton: it doesn’t reveal its concerns readily, being deliberately segmented and fragmented, but the narrator’s voice is pleasingly resonant and elegiac. The music sythesizes classical and popular instruments, both acoustic and electric, and both played and programmed. Of particular note are the nostalgic moods evoked by oboe and violin, and a lengthy fretless electric bass solo described by the composer as ‘an oasis in the middle of a barren or frozen landscape’.

The work incorporates a range of sound effects in a manner reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, with operating theatre blips, typewriters, cars and trains and more all contributing to the sense of time passing. The CD includes a copy of the text, and Greenbaum’s website includes and illuminating article by him on the genesis and the structure of The Final Hour.”

“What would you do in your final hour? If you had but one hour left, how would you express yourself? Through words, music, art? Stuart Greenbaum posits this question with his latest album, a musing on a concept of the passing of time. He talks in the notes about how the idea of a ‘concept album’ has always drawn his interest, from Pink Floyd to Pat Metheny. I think this one should join those lofty halls of fame, as this is a fascinating meld of all that is good from classical, jazz, contemporary music and more.

Melbourne musicians, including fellow composer Barry Cockcroft on Saxophone, join with the Australian National Academy of Music Strings showing that Australian musicians can create some of the most precise and brilliant contemporary music around. The words were created by a long-time collaborator of Greenbaum’s, Ross Baglin. This poetry is expressively murmured by Australian actor John Stanton, which creates a triangle between the words, music and rhythm section.

Clearly a labour of love, this album is beautiful, evocative, interesting and the perfect accompaniment to an hour of meditating on the meaning of life, music and everything. I am looking forward to my second, third and fourth times listening to and absorbing this album.”