Sandakan Threnody (2001 revised 2004) for tenor, choir and orchestra

“It is the destiny of the artist not to serve those who make history, but to serve those who are its victims.”

- Albert Camus

Sandakan Threnody is a three movement oratorio whose title refers to a town in North East Borneo that was the site of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. The word ‘threnody’ derives from the ancient Greek threnoidia, an amalgamation of threnos meaning a dirge of grieving or wailing and oide or ode. It has been incorporated into the POW Requiem and provides much of the energy for its dramatic arc.

A particularly unfortunate contingent of those captured in Singapore were sent to build an aerodrome near the strategically located town of Sandakan on the North East coast of the island of Borneo which is today, part of Sabah, the Easternmost State of Malaysia. Their story is the most tragic of all, and probably the least known. Most Australian military archives acknowledge, “Sandakan and the Sandakan Death Marches in World War II are the worst wartime atrocities committed against Australians in war”. Of the 2434 Australian and British troops who remained in Sandakan by early 1945, only 6 – all Australian – would survive. According to official records 1787 Australian and 641 British troops died somewhere along the remote 260 km jungle tracks between Sandakan and Ranau as they embarked on three marches to their deaths between January and June 1945.

The treatment of Australian and British prisoners was brought to light by the six Australian soldiers who escaped the Sandakan death marches and lived to tell the tale. Those who survived this ordeal were Keith Botterill, Dick Braithwaite, Owen Campbell, Bill Moxham, Nelson Short and Bill Sticpewich.

My father, Frank Mills was also incarcerated in Sandakan and Kuching as a prisoner-of-war between 1942 and 1945. He was a surgeon in the Australian army, stationed in a field hospital on the Malay Peninsula prior to the capitulation of Singapore. His record of service and attention to the wellbeing of his soldiers made him greatly admired. This threnody is written as a tribute to his experiences in North Borneo.

The work draws on three very different literary sources for its text; the opening lines of Psalm 130 present a cry from the depths of despair, of universal potency - “De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine” (Out of the depths do I cry unto you, O Lord). Sasha Soldatow’s wonderful translation from “Epilogue” from Akhmatova’s Requiem is the version I have chosen to set. It is a most dramatic moment in a monumental poem, in which Akhmatova suggests that the secret signs of torture can only be interpreted, by those with similar experience. Akhmatova’s words reflected most closely the meaning of a couple of conversations I had with my father about life in a prisoner-of-war camp. Such conversations were rare, though never reticent. They were rather matter-of-fact, and completely unsentimental to the point of fatalism.

Stow’s intensely lyrical poem Sleep is as close as one comes in Australian literature, to finding a lullaby in which the highly distinctive imagery of the Australian landscape is seamlessly woven into a narrative of exhaustion, repose and rejuvenation.

Sandakan Threnody comprises three movements. The first movement is scored for orchestra alone; the second for orchestra with choir and solo tenor; and the third, for solo tenor and orchestra. The opening chords of the first movement are subtlely suggestive of the stillness and grandeur of gagaku - an ancient form of Japanese classical court music.

The second movement, De Profundis, is the most extensive, both in length and musical resources and refers to the “death marches” from Sandakan to Ranau between January and June 1945. It is a chorale rather than a march, suggesting a brittle fatigue, which is only disturbed by the defiance of the solo tenor singing the text from “Epilogue” from Akhmatova’s Requiem. It evokes the utter exhaustion of the troops, as they struggled along the harsh jungle terrain of central Borneo.

The third movement is a lullaby. The imagery of Randolph Stow’s poem Sleep is quintessentially Australian. Its shifting images conjure a “charred and fuming” landscape, mirroring a desolate moon, contrasting a modest dwelling, comprising roughly hewn “wall slits and jarrah shutters” protected by a leaning rifle; and all the while, “warchants of cicadas” trill incessantly in one’s minds ear. The three refrains, each in great stillness, suggest that only sleep itself, offers the psychological space, the emptiness or silent void required to build a “fortress” and a “firebreak”.

Jonathan Mills, 2014