isle of the dead (2003)_
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This short movement for string quartet harkens back to a time where the Isle of the Dead, also known as Dead Island, served as a burial ground for the nearby convict settlement at Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia.
While acknowledging the island's colonial history, the composition places itself at the balancing point, lamenting both harshness of prison life and the injustice that often surrounded a prisoner's deportation to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), pitched against the poignant beauty that surrounds the Port Arthur site.
From the penal establishment in 1833, some 1000 burials took place on the island, mostly of convicts and ex-convict paupers. No tombstones or other marks were permitted on convict graves. Such honour was reserved only for civilian and military graves that were situated on the northern higher side, elaborately cut by convict stonemasons. In 1854 the first convict, Edward Spicer, was granted a headstone.
Later, convicts were buried on higher ground.
The penal settlement at Port Arthur was abandoned in 1877.