BY CUTCOMMON
Seven artists have been selected as winners of the Panoramic Music and Melbourne Composers’ League Inaugural Solo Performer Commissioning Competition.
Some emerging, some established, these composers were tasked with writing new works for a single peron’s voice: countertenor Hamish Gould (pictured above).
These works will be premiered in West Melbourne this April 24 at Scattered Self: Music for the 21st Century Countertenor. Composers include Scott A. Aschauer, Haydn Reeder, Declan Postlethwaite, Janet Oates, Wendy Suiter, Lewis Ingham, and Kitty Xiao. Here, some of these talented artists share the stories behind their new music.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Kitty Xiao
The piece I wrote Hamish is called the intimacy of strangers, and it explores the relationship between sound and physical embodiment, the space it occupies, its tactility and fragility. The piece is a close navigation of human connection within oneself, during a time of distance and displacement with the outside world. Sound is treated as an object with which the soloist comes into contact, developing in a generative way, reacting, and evolving in its performance. The electronics are treated as the ‘outside’ but also the inner monologue and the unconscious mind, constantly at an interplay for the audience to observe.
I was really drawn by the opportunity to work on a piece for countertenor and electronics, especially after hearing Hamish’s performances online. Since the pandemic, I’ve really appreciated writing solo electroacoustic music, and developing a close working relationship with the performer and electronics.
We’re inviting the audience into a pretty personal and intimate space
Writing for a specific performer is a completely different process for me. The piece includes field recordings of Hamish’s voice, as well as my own voice in the electronics part, so in that way we’re inviting the audience into a pretty personal and intimate space.
There was much revision after my initial draft, a result of working closely together. Often, composers don’t have this opportunity anymore, and too much time is focused on the product than actually learning from each other. I like the idea that my music is shaped by the performer. […] When I’m performing an electronic set, it’s different each time, and I like the idea of making music this way in my notated music, too.
Wendy Suiter
My composition is called Waiting. The song itself is set outside a science lab, where a chronically socially anxious handyman is watching – rather creepily voyeuristic, but maybe as an unseen benefactor – for a woman who works inside as a laboratory assistant. Owen has been waiting and hoping against hope that one day, they may meet each other in person and that he may be brave enough to actually talk to her.
I believe the text speaks for itself about the loneliness and persistence and hope required to wait patiently for the opportunity, the event, that may allow love to unfold.
So the ideas I set out to explore are all compositional questions: how to write music that is not conventional in terms of melody and harmonic movement, but still generates an atmosphere that reflects those underlying themes and the unfolding emotional tone of the text. Then the challenge is to write this evocative music, yet remain minimal in terms of the players’ required for the ensemble. Finally, it was about how to meld – without the pandemic influence – an instrument performed live and a set of audio samples into an accompaniment that hints and reflects the character of the role, and works with and around the vocal line without obscuring it.
Winning has given me an enormous boost of confidence
This competition, and winning one of the commissions, was a gift from the cosmos for me. […] I saw this competition as a way to springboard myself back from academic writing about male-stream musicology, and consequent life changes, into the thick of my creative work focusing on an opera. Winning has given me an enormous boost of confidence, and an impetus to seriously get back to my creative work as a part of daily life, and an understanding by those people significant in my life that I require time and space to make my music.
Working with Hamish has been a delight. He has really engaged with the text and my setting of it, exploring my thoughts on particular moments in the music and possible interpretations. He has been really helpful with communicating the technical requirements for his specific voice, and delivery, to ensure the best possible performance.
Because my music tends to be rather modernist, and because I tend to see countertenors as belonging to the 17th and 18th centuries when women were not allowed to perform on stage, the biggest challenge has been writing for countertenor as a male voice type, and to make that relevant, in 2021.
Lewis Ingham
During lockdown, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for the first time, and really enjoyed two particular aspects of the book: the over-the-top ideas of consumerism that run throughout the novel; and the concept of hypnopaedia (learning by hearing whilst asleep), which is used as a conditioning tool in the book, feeding the sleeping children of a future time and place with short spoken lines to influence their behaviour in society.
I decided to write my own text for this composition, modelling parts of my text on Huxley’s hypnopaedia. The text I wrote reflects on some of the obscure and sinister aspects of our present-day society: consumerism, misinformation, and conspiracies – all things we are bombarded with on a daily basis.
The text operates as an ambiguous commentary on some recent and historical misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories, with some short phrases of text, overcharged with elements of consumerism, interrupting the flow at irregular intervals. The solo countertenor part moves through the text as both an innocent bystander (which suits the countertenor vocal timbre beautifully), and as a perplexed individual trying to interpret and make sense of so many non-sensical ideas. The title of the work: A Brief Tour of Misguided Thoughts.
The text I wrote reflects on some of the obscure and sinister aspects of our present-day society: consumerism, misinformation, and conspiracies
The inaugural solo performer commissioning competition was a great opportunity to kickstart my 2021 after some composition inactivity during the Melbourne COVID-lockdown of 2020.
I was particularly interested in entering due to the application process, which involved submitting a proposal for the composition you would write if you were one of the selected composers. I enjoyed the process of conceiving the main ideas behind the work as part of my application, which gave me momentum to leap straight into the writing process with some confidence in the composition ideas I had proposed, after I was chosen as one of the successful composers.
I ended up finishing the piece much quicker than anticipated, which I attribute somewhat to the application process. It’s great to have a piece being performed as the arts industry slowly starts to emerge from the impacts of the pandemic. It’s really given me a lot of positivity leading into the year.
Haydn Reeder
I submitted an expression of interest to this competition because it would give me the opportunity and challenge to produce some electronic music, and thereby become a bit more self-reliant in getting to know and actually using the software in a composition. The pandemic did not affect the work schedule, but it is in fact the main subject of the text.
My piece is called Breathtaker, and the text is a good proportion of a recent poem by Afro-Latina American poet Yesenia Montilla. She not only describes the effect on her of wearing a mask, but also broadens the subject of breathing by referring to the killing by the police of Eric Garner in 2014 by means of a chokehold.
The backing track includes fluttering sounds, actual recordings of a flock of birds taking off, and of a person (my son, Lucian) breathing, and keyboard music.
Having learnt singing as a student, I am always glad to write for the voice, as the text is a motivator. Another reason is because there is not a great deal of contemporary music for countertenor, and especially not with a backing track.
Declan Postlethwaite
The piece I wrote is called Bewilderment. The work explores themes of connection and wonder; the reconnection of people and nature. Last year, one of the shared experiences that many people were longing for was a connection, however small. I think lots of people came to the realisation that nature plays a huge part in their connection to the world around them. The piece evokes a feeling of childlike wonder in experiences such as feeling the wind on your face or grass beneath your feet; all things that once seemed mundane are now cherished moments.
To be chosen to work on this project was a real joy. I decided to enter the competition as I wanted to make the most of 2021. Being confined at home meant a lot more time for me to hone my craft and put my own musical voice out there for people to hear and enjoy. It meant a lot to me to be chosen, not just because of the opportunity to write for the wonderful voice of Hamish Gould, but also because it encouraged me to continue writing music in the future despite constant change around us.
Working with Hamish was a delight. Our correspondence and discussions around his voice and how to shape the music were enlightening. Trying to write things that were both singable and brought out Hamish’s unique and beautiful countertenor voice was an exciting challenge for me. Working out tessitura, dynamics, and phrases to capitalise on the sweet sounds of the upper register and the deeper tones of the lower really shaped how I constructed the piece. I wanted Hamish’s voice at times to be the focal point of the work, really drawing the ear towards the lyrics and voice; at other times, I wanted Hamish to blend into the music and enhance the mood.
Janet Oates
As a singer myself, the ‘pure’ nature of the competition – write just for a solo voice! – made the competition attractive; and my fondness for the countertenor voice (my background is in early music) made it seem doubly so.
Of course, the opportunity to write for a specific goal, rather than knowing the song would sit in a dusty drawer, is immensely inspiring. To be one of the winners was wonderful. So often, composers are unheard, unvalidated, and undervalued. Successes like these make the risky career seem worthwhile!
The work is about power, about performance, and about self-construction
Le Roi s’explique is a character study of King Louis XIV – he of Versailles, dancing, and belief in the divine right of Kings. I have imagined that his supremely confident, cultured, polished façade is breaking down, revealing the stresses and doubts common to all in power but also personal to him – if he is the state (‘l’état, c’est moi’) and he was put there by God, then where is there space for his humanity, his weakness?
By taking fragments of quotations from Louis (and fragments of music by Lully, composer to the King), and breaking them down and crashing them together, I imagine him protesting and crumbling.
As Louis is well known for his dancing and performance, I have included semi-choreographed movement, which also disintegrates, almost like a puppet whose strings are breaking. So the work is about power, about performance, and about self-construction.
Watching videos of Hamish performing before I started drafting ideas for the piece, I was struck by his strong stage presence and look. This definitely influenced my ideas about the piece as a whole: that it should have a physical and gestural component. Once I had an outline and some ideas, I started talking to Hamish about them, and we were able to refine some points. this collaboration made the process seem much more valid and real, somehow – we all felt invested in the piece. And, to cap it all, when I explained the idea of the puppet strings and demonstrated some movements to him, he said it resembled steampunk, which I think will influence his performance, and which inspired me to create an image for the work (pictured below).
Composition can be a lonely process. The involvement of not just Hamish but the supportive Melbourne Composers’ League team throughout has added motivating energy and been a real joy.
Scott A. Aschauer
Scott A. Aschauer‘s composition Lapis Philosophorum will also be performed alongside these six works at the Melbourne Composers’ League event.
Images supplied. Content courtesy Susan Frykberg/Melbourne Composers’ League. Kitty Xiao photo credit Alex Clemens.
