A Lullaby Twenty-Six Years in Waiting: Dale Cornelius and What Is Carried

Some compositions wait a long time for their moment. "A Whispered Dawn (Spencer's Lullaby)" waited twenty-six years. Award-winning Australian composer Dale Cornelius wrote the string quartet in 1999 during an extraordinarily difficult period, when his first-born son, Spencer, nearly died before and after childbirth. One of the first infants in Australia to undergo an operation in utero, Spencer was born at just 27 weeks and spent three months in neonatal intensive care while doctors were uncertain whether he would survive. The piece remained a manuscript until now, and its first recording anchors What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind?, a six-track modern classical album due in October 2026.