Socrates' Garden (2019)
(at Breenhold Gardens)

Gardens have held great significance as places of rest, contemplation and meditation throughout

human civilisation. To the ancient Greeks, gardens were sanctuaries from the noise and hubbub of

everyday life, providing an opportunity to pursue learning and philosophy.

When Tom Breen and Rachael Kohn offered, through Musica Viva, to commission the present work,

Tom asked only that it should reflect in some way the experience of Breenhold Gardens, a

magnificent 40 hectare garden estate established by the family at Mount Wilson in the Blue

Mountains. I was kindly invited to visit these remarkable and visionary gardens with my family.

Breenhold is a singular vision, an enclave of natural and curated beauty, the experience of which is

intensified by the journey from the hurly-burly of Sydney to the lofty stillness of Mount Wilson. At

the heart of the estate, is a natural enclosure called Socrates’ Garden, in homage to the tradition of

the garden as a place of philosophical contemplation.

My piece, Socrates’ Garden, derives its inspiration from a meditative moment in the early evening of

our visit to Breenhold. In that moment, the only interruption to my unaccustomed, mind-clearing

interlude was a brief, single birdcall, a stylised representation of which recurs throughout the piece.

My American composition teacher, Virgil Thomson – celebrated for what New York Times critic

Bernard Holland described as music of ‘modest ambitions…simplicity, graceful assuredness (and)

disinterest in monumentality’ – once wrote: ‘Let your mind alone, and see what happens.’

It is in that spirit that I offer my musical contemplation of the tradition of the philosopher’s garden.

© Graeme Koehne 2019