Memento Mori (Sculthorpe)

"[2] When composing, Memento Mori, Sculthorpe focused on the link between 'the personal notion of morality' and the 'extended environmental sense of fragility', using 'Easter Island as a parable for planet Earth and population growth'.

By the time the first Europeans arrived, in 1722, the survivors had even forgotten the significance of the great stone heads that still stand there.Easter Island is a memento mori (literally, "remember to die") for this planet.

Joseph McLellan, writing in The Washington Post, stated that: It is a piece imbued with a religious aura, rooted in a particular landscape - barren, mysterious Easter Island, with its enormous, brooding, enigmatic statues.

And it is full of tunes, most notably the ancient plainchant Dies irae, which has been used by many classical composers but seldom with the blend of reverence and coloristic effectiveness Sculthorpe has achieved … It was marvelously effective music, innovative in sound but listener-friendly.Laurie Strachan, writing in The Australian, was similarly positive, writing that Memento Mori was 'one of [Sculthorpe's] most immediately appealing scores.

Some play is made of the plainchant Dies irae but this is not overdone and the whole thing ends on a note of quiet resolution that's absolutely right.’[2] Conversely, Andrew Clements, while reviewing a CD of Sculthorpe's work for The Guardian, said that the Memento Mori was "the most conventional and least effective piece on [the] disc".