Australian Music

[eschiss1]

Re the  Kelly - is that the opus 5 (D minor, published 1913) available at IMSLP here (via the National Library of Australia - or the other way around, apologies)?

[hattoff]

Three works by Malcolm Williamson will be uploaded shortly:

Piano Concerto No.2 (for piano and strings: 1960) in a performance in which the composer is the soloist. The work is not available on cd.

Serenade and Aubade for strings(two movements from his Symphonic Variations of 1965): authorised as a separate work.

Hammarskjold Portrait for soprano and strings(1974) sung by April Cantelo and not otherwise available.

Hard to be sure whether works by Williamson should go here. Arthur Benjamin seems to have become an honorary Englishman

Many thanks for these. I did wonder if I was the only person in the world who admired Malcolm's music!

[semloh]

Many thanks for these. I did wonder if I was the only person in the world who admired Malcolm's music!

There's a few of us around! 

Last Monday (21st), the ABC celebrated what would have been his 80th birthday with an afternoon of his music, comprising the 2nd PC, and several large scale works commercially unavailable. I taped it all, but my equipment for digitizing has to be replaced so it's yet another item in the "pending" tray! 

[BFerrell]

Most appreciated. Sounds great.

[eschiss1]

For people who have trouble hearing the pianists announced in the first track of the (worth hearing!) introduction of the Kelly, one has a Wikipedia page, and the other a website - they're a brother-sister team Michael Kieran-Harvey and Bernadette Harvey-Balkus.
Have wondered what this lovely-seeming piece would sound like (since it is indeed the opus 5 "in question" that was scanned in by the NLA) and the answer is- well, 4 minutes in ... ... lovely!!! - Looking forward to the fugue.)
(The tracks are,
1. Introduction (announcer) ;
2.Theme and Variations I and II ;
3. Variations III-VI ;
4. Variations VII-XI and Fugue.

The tempo indications of the various variations are,  for those w/o access to IMSLP or the National Library of Australia site or with access to them but whose PDF reader won't read the file (as happens to me with some),
Theme: Andante con moto
Var. I: Poco animato
Var. II: Allegro agitato
Var. III: Andante mosso
Var. IV Energico e agitato (lo stesso tempo)
Var. V Allegro con brio
Var. VI Andante con moto, piùttosto allegretto 
Var. VII Andante con moto
Var. VIII Adagio
Var. IX Allegretto, ma non troppo
Var. X Leggiero e scintillante
Var. XI Poco sostenuto e maestoso
Fugue. Allegro vivace.

[Dundonnell]

Thanks, Atsushi, for the downloads of two young Australian composer's music

Both pieces are pretty avant-garde pieces and the Dorman doesn't do much for me but you are quite correct in saying that the Kats-Chernin is 'colourful'

If young avant-garde composers write music which is rich and warm in its sonority-as this is-and colourfully orchestrated with a sense of real grandeur then not only do I have no difficulty with it I welcome and embrace the music


.....oh, I see Elena Kats-Chernin is 54 years old so perhaps 'young' is a bit misleading

[malito]

The Kats-Chernin symphony is incredible!!!!  Thanks for downloading this for us! Malito

[TerraEpon]

Kats-Chernin has written some much more 'lighter' music. I have a fantastic disc of her music that has a lot of ragtime and salon type pieces, with I don't believe any avant-garde sound at all.

[semloh]

Kats-Chernin has written some much more 'lighter' music. I have a fantastic disc of her music that has a lot of ragtime and salon type pieces, with I don't believe any avant-garde sound at all.

Yes, I thought she was best known in Australia for her rags and piano pieces (notably Russian Rag), but I see that she had a single item in the ABC's Top 100 20thC music list, her ballet music Wild Swans. She is the composer-in-residence of the Queensland SO in Brisbane.

She's not really an "unsung" - at least not here in Australia. 

[lechner1110]

  I'm glad to hear comment by everyone.  Well, Both works are 'avant-garde'. But at the same time ,I felt both works are very interesting.

  I didn't know name of Kats-Chernin is well known at Australia.  But maybe her name will well known around the world soon.

[semloh]

  I didn't know name of Kats-Chernin is well known at Australia.  But maybe her name will well known around the world soon.

This raises the issue - perhaps best to avoid! - of what constitues an "unsung composer", since one may be "unsung" in some places and not in others. 

[isokani]

Well Kats Chernin, whatever her merits, is very well known.

[semloh]

Well Kats Chernin ...is very well known.

But not outside Australia, surely?

[jowcol]

I've posted the Violin Concerto of Australian Composer Ian Cugley in the Downloads section. (He did also spend much of his live in Tasmania and the UK—but the Australians call them his own.)   I'd have to say he was one of the most interesting characters I've run across here, and can't resist sharing more about him, not just in terms of what must have been an original personality, but also what we may grow to expect in the "footprint" composers will leave in the digital age going forward.. I've also found out more about the soloist on this recording. Please pardon the epic-length announcement.

About Ian Cugley:   



Wikepedia Entry:


He was born in Melbourne in 1945. He gained early prominence with two orchestral works, Pan, the Lake and Prelude for Orchestra, which were performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1967 and subsequently recorded on EMI. His career after then was less spectacular, and he had a propensity for hiding away and concentrating on composition without seeming overly concerned with performance. He rarely attended performances of his music unless they happened to be close at hand.


He lectured in Music and Computing at the University of Tasmania for many years, including a period in charge of the small Music department there, and was a percussionist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. During his time in Tasmania he wrote mainly chamber music, usually on commission for bodies or performers outside Tasmania. A notable exception is the Violin Concerto commissioned by the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music for Jan Sedivka, who was soloist at the first performance in 1980 (with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Patrick Thomas).

Cugley left Tasmania in the early 1980s to go to the United Kingdom and virtually disappeared into the Dorset countryside, gaining a meagre income by selling his watercolour paintings, and then as a part-time lecturer in computing in Bournemouth and London.

Unable to work for many years because of illness, he broke his silence and returned to composing only in the last years of his life. Since he was largely forgotten in his own country, and unknown in the UK, performances were few. He regarded this as an advantage, not only because he resented the work involved in preparing for performance as a distraction from composing itself, but also because he was acutely shy and hated being present when his music was performed. He claimed to hear only the wrong notes when his music was played.

In 2010 he was working again on a set of symphonies first started in 1973. His stated ambition was to die before they were complete, to save all the fuss associated with performance.

He died in November 2010, aged 65.

From the Australian Music Centre:

Self Portrait  in Charcoal



Australian-born composer Ian Cugley passed away on 4 November in the UK. A former student of Peter Sculthorpe, Cugley came to prominence through his 1960s orchestral works Pan, the Lake and Prelude for orchestra. Prior to his move to the UK in the 1980s, he was active in Tasmania where he composed, taught music and computing at the University of Tasmania, and worked as a percussionist.

Since his move to the UK, and partly due to his deteriorating health, Cugley no longer considered himself an active composer.

'I used to be a composer, reasonably well recognised in my own country, but I don't do that now and I tend not to dwell on the past', he stated on his website. His friend and former composition teacher, however, considered Cugley as one of his most gifted students. Sculthorpe and Cugley maintained their friendship through sporadic correspondence:

'While I was deeply concerned about his health problems, his letters, always quirkily-expressed, were remarkably cheerful. He kept me abreast of the music that he was writing and the physical difficulties involved in committing it to paper', said Sculthorpe.

Cugley's Pan, the Lake, recorded by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1968, was based on a theme from Sculthorpe's Irkanda IV.

'Now, whenever I hear this piece, thoughts of Ian will come flooding into my heart. After Ian died, his sister Mavis told me that he'd recently managed to write a guitar solo for his son James. He also wrote a string quartet for a friend. All his life, he took joy in writing music for those who were dear to him. I treasure the fact that he wrote his Little Adagio for strings especially for my fiftieth birthday, in 1979. He was a special composer and a special friend', said Sculthorpe.

Tasmanian composer Don Kay met Cugley in the late 1960s. He remembers Cugley as a multitalented artist who had a formidable intellect but who also harboured many personal demons.

'I first met Ian Cugley when he came to dinner at my house in Hobart in 1969. He had arrived that very day to take up his position of Tutor of Music at the University of Tasmania, at the invitation of Rex Hobcroft, then Lecturer of Music there. By the time Ian left Hobart in 1982, he had established a high reputation as a teacher of harmony and analysis at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music. His students responded to him with great respect and much affection. His own specially devised book on harmony became something of a Bible to them.'

'Perhaps his major work, before leaving Hobart, was his very challenging Violin Concerto, written for and premiered by Jan Sedivka in the late 1970s, with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. I particularly remember a piano work, Aquarelles (notable for its intricate and delicate traceries of sound), which was broadcast on the ABC by Beryl Sedivka in 1971, in a program of works by Tasmanian composers. Ian possessed a wry and charming self-depreciating sense of humour, as well as impressive artistic talents. I feel very sad that his personal difficulties deprived us of a more significant body of work', Kay said.
________________________________________
by Stefan Karpiniec on 25 November, 2010, 5:35pm
Near the end of my time as a student at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music I heard Ian somewhat cynically lament: "There are two types of students, those who will learn it anyway, no matter what you do, and those who will never learn it, no matter what you do". As far as I was concerned this was far from the truth, for Ian's teaching expanded both my concept and understanding of "it" far more than would have ever happened had I been left to my own devices. His lectures were engaging, erudite and delivered with both passion and scintillating wit. I found them so attractive that I would fill my quota of elective units each semester first by selecting anything with Ian's name attached to it, and then anything else of interest. Among the units I studied with him were Australian Music since 1950, European Music since 1960, Electronic Music I & II, Orchestration I & II and Japanese Music. He was a sociable teacher, supplementing his formal classes with "listening nights", when we would gather at someone's residence equipped with quantities of both relevant recordings and alcohol, and listen to and discuss works such as Hymnen or Drumming until the early hours.

Ian always stressed the primacy of actual sound above its representation printed on a page, once remarking "a musicologist is a person who can read music but can't hear it", a statement which still causes me feelings of annoyance and guilt, as to this day I am unable to analyse music as well aurally as I can by looking at a score. He used metaphor very effectively in his teaching, and I well remember him comparing the development of western harmony from c.1600 to the late 19th century to the evolution of the bodywork of the 1957 Studebaker (or some similar car).

He was keen to spread the word to the wider community, co-hosting (with Anne Shirley) a contemporary music program on community radio (7CAE FM/ THE FM), was active in running the station, also contributing articles, cartoons and other artwork to its magazine. Along the way he taught me how to record a concert, and how to broadcast, all with his usual precision and dry humour:

Me (on first entering the radio studio): "Tell me how this works",
Ian:       "I can't tell you how it works. I can tell you how to use it".

I regained contact with Ian about seven years ago, at which time he seemed to be publicly admitting an interest in music again, and I sent him a recording of the "Voices of History" concert http://www.bicentenary.tas.gov.au/events/event.php?id=21 performed to mark Hobart's 200th anniversary, which opened with his Canzona for brass and organ. I lost his email address subsequent to that, but found him again via facebook about a year ago, and am pleased to have had insight into his thoughts and the occasional exchange with him over that time. The date of the last entry on his facebook page is that of the day before his death. His sense of humour had not deserted him.

His facebook comments also reveal that he had started to compose again, although he made characteristic self-deprecatory remarks about his endeavours in a comment to Michael Sydney Jones:

"Paint — no, eyesight precludes. Write — not really, can't remember how to spell and the few words I can spell I can't type. Compose — I pretend. "Going through the motions" is a phrase more often associated with swimming near a sewage outlet, but it's more or less what I do, and with similar results"

I remember many people with affection for having helped develop my passion for music, but I value Ian above all others for helping me to understand it.


Recollections by Helgart Mahler:

In Tasmania I also met the composer Ian Cugley, a highly intelligent man and unusually generous with his time and insights. We had regular discussion sessions and in subtle ways he taught me an enormous lot. Not how to compose, but by constant feedback and probing questions he helped me analyse and gain a more intelligent control of the direction in which my work was going.

Internet Footprint:
The use of the internet by today's composers offers some interesting capabilities to document them further, but also some drawback.  Cugley had both his own website (which is no longer active ), a facebook page (which doesn't seem to make any of his specific posts available anymore-- ), and it seems he was also involved in an the help center chat group for the music software program Sibelius.  I'm reproducing some of his posts on the Digeridoo and classical music notation from that site,  as I think it gives some insight into the man and his values.

http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?com=thread&start=484264&groupid=3&&guest=1#484316

Re: Sib. 5.x: Notation Of a Didgeridoo
Posted by Ian Cugley - 15 Feb 10:52AM
There are some specific shapes derived from indigenous Australian symbols which are sometimes used to indicate the specific blowing or choking techniques. I imagine these could be turned in simplified graphic shapes for notational purposes, though I know of no consensus about ways of writing for this instrument.

In the scores I've seen there is usually just a line to show where the player should improvise and no indication of what the player should do. I never know who gets the royalties in such as case, but it ought not to be to the sole benefit of the 'composer'.

Here's one example of figurative notation:
http://www.ausbushcraft.com.au/html/Didgeridoo_Notation.html

Re: Sib. 5.x: Notation Of a Didgeridoo
Posted by Ian Cugley - 15 Feb 06:47PM
>perhaps you can focus some of your research efforts on how other 'Drone' style instruments get scored for.

I'm sorry to come over all schoolmarmish, but it's not overly polite (and possibly not PC, for those who would endose such a term) to call this instrument a drone — you might well call a cello a drone because it has open strings. I was at the first performance in 1971 of the Dreyfus/Winunguj sextet you linked to and the sounds were anything but drone-like or monophonic. The range of overtones, multiphonics, screeches, growls and rasps is considerable, even with traditional playing styles (which George Winunguj used). What some of the current rock- or pop-oriented players do nowadays is astonishing. Stockhausen would have given his right arm for some of the noises . . .

The score at that link is one of those I was thinking of when I spoke in my earlier post of 'just a line to show where the player should improvise'.

Re: Sib. 5.x: Notation Of a Didgeridoo
Posted by Ian Cugley - 16 Feb 10:51AM (edited 16 Feb 10:52AM)
Jim said:

>Where did the 'Derogatory Overtone' come from in my using the term 'Drone'?

I'm sorry. I've fallen into the trap of taking offence on behalf of others. I was being schoolmarmish, though without the bicycle. Cellos have a nice overtone series too, so if I have offended any cellists I'm sorry for that too.

Although I seem to have made the point intemperately, the point still has some validity, though impressions and tastes will vary: the didgeridoo rarely functions as a drone either in (what remains of) tribal musics or in most Western-style music. Much the same is true of the cello.

It has to be admitted that some earlier Australian composers who hadn't heard the instrument except in recordings might have attempted to imitate or evoke the didgeridoo sound with a drone. This convention rebounded on me with a piece of mine which began with that most European of devices, a pedal point, and that most characteristic of Latin instruments, claves. The critics assumed immediately that I was writing 'aboriginal' music, with the 'drone' of the didgeridoo and the clicking of message sticks. I was offended that they assumed that I might think that that was what a didgeridoo was like. Perhaps I'm still smarting from that insult and was more dogmatic in my earlier post than I ought to have been.

Tangent #1:
If you Google "Sibelius" and "Ian Cugley", you'll find more.  It is almost like stumbling across a cache of letters by the composer—but for the moment they are accessible to all.  However, unless someone backs them up and preserves them, they may disappear like the content on his web site and likely his facebook page.   There are web-catching programs out there that "mirror: and preserve a given site for a given point in time.  (As the infamous Heaven's Gate s site which is preserved in mirrors after the infamous mass suicide closed the original.)  I'm wondering how current music historians are approaching the issue of preserving a composer's internet footprint.  It's a shame to let it all wither.


Tangent #2:
Another idea I find fascinating (but then again, I'm a geek)  is that he was writing Sibelius plugins and sharing them, a couple for Harp are documented here
http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?category=22

This is a total tangent, but I can't help but wonder where composers can go with plugins, and writing scripts for composing software. I must admit that one thing I've always wanted to do with the Harmony Assistant software program I use (from time to time) is to write a script that can generate an orchestra version of Terry Riley's In C, where groups of instruments will be in unison, rather than each instrument.  I've got an algorithm in my head for using a variant of markov chains to control the behavior for each group—but I've never had time to chase this down. 

Back to the subject:

Cugley's MySpace Blog is still in existence here, most written in the last year of his life.
http://www.myspace.com/dadcug/blog

Something from there you would never expect a composer of this Violin Concerto, or someone with an interest in classical percussion  to admit: 

Turning to domestic news, James has  bought himself Guitar Hero World Tour for the X-Box, and thus now owns three plastic toy guitars, a microphone, and a small electronic drum kit. I have secretly practiced the drum part of Michael Jackson's Beat It, and I can get 93% on Easy (76% on Medium). .

I've  also found his  son's journal-- http://damiancugley.livejournal.com/ .  I'm not sure how much he appreciated his father's music (Adam Ant was one of the son's "faves"), but he clearly appreciated him and a very creative and caring person.

Soloist:
In this case, I've also found something about the soloist in this recording:



Jan Sedivka (1917-2009) made a career as a concert violinist and as one of Australia's most important music pedagogues. Sedivka was born in Czechoslovakia and continued his musical training in France and England. He moved to Australia in the 1960s and, after some years in Queensland, soon found his home in Tasmania. There he became the influential teacher of generations of string players who went on to take positions in orchestras all over Australia and abroad. Sedivka was also known as a performer to whom many Australian composers (Larry Sitsky, James Penberthy, Ian Cugley, Don Kay, Colin Brumby, Edward Cowie, Eric Gross) dedicated their works. Prof Sedivka was the Director of the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music from 1972 to 1982, and taught regularly at the Shanghai Conservatorium of Music in China. He held the positions of Honorary Professor both in Shanghai University and University of Tasmania, and was the Master Musician in Residence at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium from his retirement in 1983 until his death. Read University of Tasmania's tribute for Jan Sedivka.

[jowcol]

I've posted a link for Gerad Brophy: Concerto for Amplified Violin and Orchestra  "Exu" (1983) in the downloads folder.

He is still active, and does a lot of work integrating electronics and third world elements with orchestral compositions.



A bio from his own website:

http://gerardbrophy.com.au/

Bio from his site:

After an increasingly musical adolescence, Gerard Brophy began his studies in the classical guitar at the age of twenty-two. In the late seventies he worked closely with Brazilian guitarist Turibio Santos and the Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel before studying composition at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music.

He has been commissioned and performed by some of the world's leading ensembles, including the Melbourne, Queensland, Tasmanian, West Australian, Sydney and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras: the Malaysian Philharmonic; and the BBC Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, to name a few. Over recent years he has developed a keen interest in collaborating with artists from other disciplines and he is particularly active in the areas of ballet, dance and electronica. He has also been involved in exciting collaborations with musicians from other cultures among them the great Senegalese master drummers, the N'Diaye Rose family, and the timbila virtuoso Venancio Mbande from Mozambique.

Recent performances include the sell-out season of his ballet Yo Yai Pakebi, Man Mai Yapobi choreographed by Regina van Berkel and performed by the Residentie Orkest and the Nederlands Dans Theater; the premiere seasons of Semele and Halcyon as part of the Australian Ballet's highly successful INTERPLAY and EDGE OF NIGHT programmes, and the Song Company's tour of Gethsemane, his contemporary passion play.

Currently he divides his time between Brisbane and Calcutta.

Another blurb I've dug up:

Gerard Brophy is a contemporary Australian composer. His music has been performed at all the major festivals including the Gaudeamus Music Week, Warsaw Autumn, Nuove Consonanza, Nuovi Spazi Musicali and the Zagreeb Biennale.
Gerard Brophy began his music studies in classical guitar. He studied composition with Don Banks, Anthony Gilbert and Richard Toop at the NSW Conservatorium of Music and graduated as Student of the Year in 1982. Brophy has been awarded numerous composition prizes here and overseas and his works have been selected for performance at the 1981, 1984, 1986 and 1991 ISCM World Music Days.

Brophy has received Australia Council Composer Fellowship, an Italian government scholarship and scholarships from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena and the Paris Conservatoire. His music has been commissioned and performed by some of the world's leading ensembles - the St Louis, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, Kitchener Waterloo Symphony, Nash Ensemble, Het Nieuw Ensemble, Gruppo Musica d'Oggi, Het Trio, Chicago Pro Musica, Ensemble Octandre and Ensemble l'Itineraire, and it has been regularly broadcast in Europe, Japan, United States and Australia. In late 1983, Brophy was appointed the inaugural Composer-in-Residence at Musica Viva Australia. This was followed by other residencies with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Queensland Conservatorium and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.


Here is a brief "audio" Bio from the Austrailian Broadcasting Corp
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/nma/img/brophy.mp3