Interlude 02: 2008 Listening

Having recently completed Freefall, 2008 began for me with the composition of Circa and some of Mao’s Last Dancer, followed by the scoring of Daybreakers, then back to Mao’s Last Dancer.

The commission for Lightfall was confirmed in April and I was constantly thinking about the nature of the piece while working on these other projects.

Here is an extract from the Sydney Symphony’s 2009 – Australian Composition Kit, written in October 2008:

Are there any composers that have inspired or influenced you for this work?

Recently I have been listening to a lot of Persian composer Kayhan Kalhor. who plays the Kamancheh.

His improvisations in the Persian modes, essentially one instrument with a drone or percussive accompaniment, I find quite inspirational and his compositions for the Silk Road Ensemble have opened my eyes to a whole world of possibilities.

In my youth I listened to King Crimson and their guitarist Robert Fripp. Lately I have been rediscovering his solo work, sometimes with Brian Eno, which he called Frippertonics. It was/is created with a single electric guitar fed (in those days) through tape loops or (these days) digital delays.

He creates a world where time stands still, often with the lone voice of a guitar (with cello-like richness) chanting in a cathedral of sound.

These two musicians (Kalhor and Fripp) are closest in spirit to how I am thinking at the moment although they are quite different to my approach when it comes to the nuts and bolts.

I have been looking at some of the music of Morton Feldman and Witold Lutoslawski (scroll down to example) to see how they handled free time. Also Benjamin Britten for his use of, what I call, displaced unison – where two or more instruments play the same pitches, start and finish together but in between have different rhythms producing a melodic blur.

Osvaldo Golijov to remind me that music is a joy and John Adams for being so much of our time and yet always remaining challenging.

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I could have specifically mentioned The Dharma at Big Sur by Adams, his concerto for electric violin and orchestra, with its magical building of a B tonality at the start, through its carefully notated, pseudo-improvisation over an ever-changing orchestral background, to its hard-won, ecstatic, wild ending. I found myself often returning to this strange and exhilarating world.

Finnish composers, Kaija Saariaho

and Kalevi Aho

and the Latvian Pëteris Vasks

also held (and still hold) a fascination for me. Why Baltic music should make such a strong connection with an Australian I can’t say, but certainly the spiritual depth and distant horizons resonate with me.

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Of course there was a lot more music that I listened to in 2008 such as plenty of lieder (Schubert, Strauss) and Britten vocal music but it’s hard to find any connection between those pieces and Lightfall.