A Drunken Fingerprint Across the Sky depicts a ‘murmuration’: a flock of starlings flying together, whirling and dancing across the sky. It is hypnotic to watch and somehow seems to be both random and choreographed. The title is taken from Richard Wilbur’s poem 'An Event' – also a reflection on starlings flocking.

It is dedicated to my father and was written on his guitar.

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Commissioned by the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music with the support of Peter and Rasika Crowley for the Guitar Perspectives Composition Award

Thank you to Peter and Rasika Crowley, Ken Murray, and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music for making this project possible.

Thank you to Sophie Marcheff for her beautiful performance.

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To purchase the score visit: www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/work/vincent-ade-drunken-fingerprint-across-the-sky

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An Event – Richard Wilbur

As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,
A landscapeful of small black birds, intent
On the far south, convene at some command
At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone With headlong and unanimous consent
From the pale trees and fields they settled on.

What is an individual thing? They roll Like a drunken fingerprint across the sky! Or so I give their image to my soul
Until, as if refusing to be caught
In any singular vision of my eye
Or in the nets and cages of my thought,

They tower up, shatter, and madden space
With their divergences, are each alone Swallowed from sight, and leave me in this place Shaping these images to make them stay: Meanwhile, in some formation of their own, They fly me still, and steal my thoughts away.

Delighted with myself and with the birds,
I set them down and give them leave to be. It is by words and the defeat of words, Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt, That for a flying moment one may see
By what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.