Project Description
The Springtime It Brings on the Shearing is one of the best-known of all Australian folk songs. It appears to have been based on a poem The Wallaby Track by E J Overbury, published in the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser in 1865. It is a gentle, matter-of-fact sort of song; painting a contented picture, which verges on the romantic image of bush life.
These two arrangements of The Springtime It Brings on the Shearing are part of a larger collection of choral arrangements of 20 Australian folk song titles. The works were commissioned in 2022 by the Queensland Kodály Choir as a legacy project of Australian Choral Music and are collectively available in a two-part anthology titled On a Distant Shore.
The Queensland Kodály Choir has generously determined that these anthologies and all of their associated resources should be made freely available to anyone who would like to make use of them. To facilitate this, whilst each of the arrangements is copyright, the full set of project resources has been licensed under Creative Commons International Licence, meaning that they can be freely shared, copied and/or redistributed.
Conductors/choirs wishing to access the Anthology – Parts 1 & 2 – and/or the companion rehearsal tracks, can do so by following the link to the Cuskelly College of Music website. The complete individual titles (including cover title page, vocal score, piano accompaniment, extracted instrument parts, performance notes and glossary of terms) are available in the Anthology Catalogue on this website.
Perusal and download copies of the two arrangements of The Springtime It Brings on the Shearing are available below.
Featured Image: “Shearing the Rams” by Tom Roberts, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
