‘The Secret Path’ was written for the book launch of Peter Campbell’s history of Trinity College, Melbourne. The poem was published in the college’s magazine called the ‘Fleur-de-Lys’ in 1936 by someone with the initials ‘A.D’. 

Tenor: Christopher Watson 
Pianist and Composer: Jem Herbert
Recorded in the Trinity College Chapel, Melbourne

“Ah, know you not the secret path
Through the small copse where cuckoos sing,
Where primrose candles light the way
Towards the altar of the spring?

Did you not walk it long ago
With happy heart and care-free eyes,
Until spring’s bluebell altar cloth
Dazzled your soul with deep surprise?

There at the secret path’s blue end,
Where spring and youth and joy belong—
Did you not stand in awe and joy
And listen to the cuckoo’s song?

O secret path that once you knew;
O bluebells fair; O copse a-flower;
Where are they now, that happy heart,
That secret path, that April hour?”

The Secret Path

My grandma passed away last night. This is an unedited, heart-on-sleeve improvisation done in memory of her. One or two of her favourite tunes made their way into the end of the take.

Improvisation for Grandma

The Choir of Hatfield College, Durham
Durham Cathedral
Director of Music: Patryk Korczak

Psalm 45 (chants and pointing by Jem Herbert)

This partsong is by Frank Bridge, using a poem by Shelley. The text laments the 'dead cold year' of the winter season and evokes a sense of longing for spring and new life. Here, it is performed by The Trinity Singers, in Trinity College Chapel on October 29, 2023.

"The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.


The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the Year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling;
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play--
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear."

Frank Bridge: Autumn

Rachmaninoff Prelude Op. 23, No. 4

Chopin Etude Op. 25, No. 1

Rachmaninoff Etude Tableaux Op. 39, No 4

Written for the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School Choir and their conductor, Dermot Tutty.

Do we sing to see your face?
Do we sing to hear your cry?
Do we sing to feel your soft embrace,
Or to fly?
To soar
To that green hill far away
And be as children,
Where those voices are no more?

Do we sing when words depart?
A golden thread from heart to heart.
Do we play because we strive?
Or is music a simple salute to being alive?


Music is time;
Time we could lend.
Music is money
That others could spend.
Music is thought;
Thoughts we could seize
To bring the world
Greater justice and ease.

Music feeds souls, it is true, but at what moral cost?
Is it for those, hungry or lost?

Give us cause!

With cause or not, we stand here today.
In this, we might have something to say.

Give Us Cause

A micro-opera written by the Master of Music, Opera Performance students at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

Jem Herbert

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