Words About Music (WAM) Writings Composers in Time | Composers in Time |
| Written by Anne-Marie Mousley | |
| Saturday, 16 January 2010 | |
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In this year's Musica Fever we devoted two pages to the four composers at National Music Camp. But composers are interesting people, and we found that we had more information on them than we were able to fit into the magazine. Here, then, is the special Extended Edition of the 'Composers in Time'.  NMC 2010 Composers with tutor Eliott Gyger At National Music Camp this year, the four composers were asked to take the camp’s theme of rhythm and write a one to two minute work for untuned percussion. This composition then became the foundation for a five to eight minute work for untuned percussion and any combination of a 14-piece orchestral ensemble. Their compositions were written for performance by ensembles (made up of both tutors and students) at camp on the January 15, 2010. I climbed through the woods in the hour-before-dawn dark. The composition is about sounds appearing and disappearing, structured by big chord pillars within which the listener can zoom their attention into the small fiddly bits of detail. For Chris, the challenge was to “make the work dynamic and interesting within a fundamentally static piece, to get people to hear things in a new way, and focus on colour and detail as if they have never heard sound before.” In incorporating the Camp’s theme of rhythm, Chris explains that A Frost-Making Stillness “is about finding rhythm within sustained sound, the articulation of a chord without a harmonic rhythm.” Chris has just finished a Bachelor of Music in Composition with Honours at the Sydney Conservatorium. This young composer has been lucky enough to have had his works premiered in Australia and internationally in America, England, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. For Chris, the highlight of his career so far was being selected to participate in the 2008 Darlington International Summer School in England, where he worked with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for three weeks. This year Chris is looking forward to his position as Young Composer in Residence with The Australian Voices in Brisbane, providing opportunities for writing and workshopping new works with the choir, and having them recorded and performed on tour. Peggy Polias The babushka or matryoshka doll is the inspiration behind Peggy Polias’ new work Patterns III, Matryoshka. Matryoshkas – those Russian dolls, one inside the other in decreasing size – were also the basis for her recently completed Masters in Music at the Sydney Conservatorium. “Within this set of dolls are so many parallels with music,” explains Peggy as she describes her composition. “Each section [of my work] brings in a new instrumental family and different material, but from the same grid.” The grid is an infinite series of pitches influenced by gamelan music and the fractal concept. She has created the riffs that her work is based on by taking sections of the grid and including or omitting certain pitches. Peggy has incorporated the rhythm theme of the camp by “playing with the number four versus the number five.” She wants the listener to feel the grooves and contrast in this pulse-based work. For Peggy, the challenge was to explore the different directions you could take from one musical source. Amongst highlights of her career as a composer so far, Peggy includes being the recipient of the 2007 Young Composers Competition, which resulted in her solo piano composition Stitch being premiered at the Canberra International Chamber Music Festival. In the same year Peggy won the Sydney University and Fellowship of Australian Composer’s Women Composer prize for her work The Moon. “Composing on camp is an intense experience, living composition 24 hours a day.” Peggy usually composes between balancing jobs. She is a music copyist for Peter Sculthorpe and Elena Kats-Chernin and also works two days a week at the Australian Music Centre. As a composer she is open to “trying as much as possible [and] dabbling in different areas.” Timothy Tate Going into his Honours year at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, Timothy Tate has started 2010 by returning to the composition program at National Music Camp for the second time. In his new work Holding Patterns, Timothy has taken the camp’s theme of rhythm by turning tuned pitch instruments into rhythmic instruments. His aim was to create a sense of seeing drama but without hearing it. Timothy’s piece is about playing with perception between the senses, “seeing patterns which you can’t hear and trying to grasp what you can hear.” In writing Holding Patterns, Timothy has delved into the world of “exploring timbres and non-tangible sounds so the music atmosphere created is fragile.” “It is about seeing but not hearing,” says Timothy as he describes what he wants to convey to the listener. “You can see physical movement and drama, but what you hear is quite different.” To achieve this effect he has incorporated a lot of quiet playing techniques such as the use of rosinless bows, practice mutes and air sounds in the winds. Timothy chose to write for the full ensemble to take up the opportunity to develop a new writing style. “It is more complex than any work I’ve written before.” This camp has given Timothy the opportunity to explore a “new style; more rhythmic and complex, pushing the instruments to the limit.” There are a lot of words in the score describing different playing techniques. For Timothy the first rehearsal was extremely helpful in “seeing players interpret words at and to hear how the piece moves forward.” Timothy is also a violist, and hopes to remain active as a performer in conjunction with his career as a composer. He is passionate about ensuring that the next generation of Australian composers gets the opportunity to hear their works performed by musicians in a concert format. Timothy is the co-founder of Ensemble Fabrique, who perform new and old works, and also the Sounding Out Composers Collective, which began in 2008. Aristea Mellos Inspiration for Buy A Copy, the new work written by Aristea Mellos for the 2010 National Music Camp, comes from her everyday life. For the past four years while she has walked around Circular Quay to the Sydney Conservatorium (where she has just completed her Bachelor of Music), Aristea has heard the cry of a street vendor which is the title for this work. “I used to hear him every day selling The Big Issue, with the same cry; same rhythm and same intonation.” With a funk and jazz influence in her composition, Aristea wanted to capture the sense of fun he manages to maintain for such a mundane job. “I want to listener to feel how happy he makes me as I pass him each day. It would be strange if he wasn’t there.” With this year’s camp theme of rhythm, Aristea captured the rhythm of the vendors cry as the basis for the work. “There is always an element of pressure when composing” says Aristea, “but here on camp the process it is so much faster, with a much tighter schedule.” For Aristea the rehearsal process here on camp was very rewarding, “The first rehearsal was illuminating, you realise how important acoustics of the environment can be.” She had to tailor here writing to match the “super-resonant” acoustic qualities of the Llewellyn Hall. “At the second rehearsal it was satisfying to hear the changes worked.” Aristea’s highlight as a composer so far has been participating in the Bowdin International Music Festival for six weeks last year, where George Crumb was the Composer in Focus. For 2010, Aristea has been commissioned to write a new work for pianist Stephen Whale, who is studying at Yale University. Aristea has a passion for setting text and composing choral music. She is interested in choral music education programs. “Children have the wonderful ability to hear everything as just music, not new music, or strange music, but just music.” © Anne-Marie Mousley |
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