Comissioned by the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts

Sydney - St Stephens Uniting Church
8pm, 14th October, 2008

Viva La Gong Festival - Woollongong
6pm, 11th October, 2008

2006 Festival of Voices - Hobart
2005 Multicultural Arts Victoria - Kultour Tour -Melbourne
2005 Nexus Arts Centre - Kultour Tour - Adelaide
2005 National Multicultural Arts Festival - Kultour Tour - Canberra
2003 Theatre North - Launceston, Tasmania (Revised Latin Version)
2001 Premiered at the Federation Festival of Melbourne (Russian Version)

A choral work for three solo cantors - in Hebrew, Greek and Latin - and eight male voices, with a quarter-tone set of specially crafted Hand Bells

Prayer Bells or PENTEKOSTARION is divided into twenty-one prayers, some intoned by bells alone. The work is based on heterophony, as opposed to polyphony or harmony: melody is used to create a harmonic accompaniment and structure to the chant.

The work spans the cultural and historical boundaries of three divergent but related chant traditions. Most of the Hebrew chants come from early parts of the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament. Byzantine chants are the poetical expression of Orthodox theology. And Latin texts are from the medieval scholars, Sedulius Scottus and Paulinus of Nola. There is also reference to Gnosticism, the ancient esoteric spiritual movement considered at odds with traditional Christian ideology.

Sixty-one bells are used in the work, all of them specially commissioned and cast as the Federation Bells for the Centenary of Federation. The bells are in six sets of eleven quarter-tone bells, pitched between A and D.

Streaming Media from Prayer Bells
	Prayer 2 - Hebrew Cantor
	Prayer 7 - Hebrew Cantor
	Prayer 10 - Greek Cantor
	Prayer 13 - Male Choir and Bowed bells
	Prayer 18 - Latin Cantor
	Prayer 20 - Greek Cantor
	Prayer 21 - Three Cantors and Male Choir

Review - Opera Opera, 2006 (PDF)

Prayer Bells Program 2003 (PDF)
Download Performance Technical Rider (PDF)