The Year My Voice Broke: The Lark Ascending

'The Lark Ascending’ functions as the main musical theme in the coming-of-age film, The Year My Voice Broke (John Duigan, 1987), and features in this trailer for the film.

It was composed by the famous British nationalist composer of the pre-war and interwar period, Ralph Vaughan Williams, in 1921.

The instrumental composition features several cadenzas by the violin soloist which flutter up and down an evocative pentatonic scale in the manner of traditional English folk, and is superimposed over the cinematography of the surrounding Merino sheep-grazing land of the rural NSW town of Braidwood.

Juxtaposed with a popular music score that generally corresponds to the film’s nostalgic 1960s setting, ‘The Lark Ascending’ embodies Danny’s (Noah Taylor) imagination and memory and suggests a disjunction between place and cultural aspiration.