BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
“Now, why didn’t we think of that?”
This is a glimpse into Australian composer Ian Munro’s thoughts on the creative energy and innovation of the Omega Ensemble, which will present the composer’s clarinet quintet Songs from the Bush as part of its debut album. This work, inspired and influenced by Indigenous music traditions, will be released alongside compositions from Palmer and Mozart in a recording made possible through Omega’s crowdfunding project.
Ian is a member of the Australia Ensemble, which he considers comparable to Omega in program style and ensemble – in fact, Omega’s “intelligent and musical” artistic director David Rowden has performed with AE as a guest clarinettist in the past. But Ian says: “The freshness and youth of Omega is something I welcome and appreciate” – and you can get set to experience it for yourself with their album’s Pozible campaign exceeding its goals.
Songs from the Bush was premiered at the Huntington Festival with Cathy McCorkill and the Goldner String Quartet, and has since been tackled by Sabine Meyer and the Modigliani Quartet in a 2011 Musica Viva concert season.
“When David subsequently played it at the Kangaroo Valley Festival, I was very taken with his interpretation, and was very pleased when he programmed it again for Omega’s own series,” Ian says.
He talks us through the clarinet quintet (which you can still support online), the powerful role of Indigenous music in Australian composition, and the way composers and musicians are adapting to social media in this new generation.
Ian, your clarinet quintet draws on Australian folk and Indigenous music. What stories do you share through the music?
There are two points of origin in the piece, each stemming from an interest I have in Australian musical history and, especially, the question of what agency music has had and continues to have in the growth of Australian society.
My family history has a lot to do with two of the old gold mining towns of Victoria, and so I have read about the songs and stories collected in such places by John Meredith in his book Folksongs of Australia. At the same time, I have admired the music of Peter Sculthorpe since I was a teenager, and have wanted to try to absorb some of his ideas and practices around Indigenous music, and to find a way to reflect those in my music, too.
So, in this piece, I incorporated a melody developed from a children’s song collected in the Kimberley in the 1960s, sung by a 9-year-old Walmajarri girl. When I heard it, I began to wonder at its very slight resemblance to Wild Rover, an early Australian bush song, and to think about the nature of cross frontier musical sharing and dissemination in the early colonial days. Since then, I have learned that it is indeed quite possible that the songs of both cultural groups, European and Indigenous, could very well have crossed vast distances – even ahead of actual physical encounters as bartered objects did, in fact. So, in a way, the piece is about that meeting of cultures.
It’s also a way of playing with the idea of originality and imagination, so that I use both folk material and Indigenous music in two distinct ways: more or less simply stated, close to its ‘original’ form, and highly developed and re-imagined and re-combined with other tunes and motifs. The other sort of music is entirely my own, like the slow central movement Campfire and night sky, which means to evoke a scene of quiet bush reverie, a campfire setting where songs and stories might be shared. In this way, I mean to ask the question: ‘Where do other people’s thoughts and songs end and I begin?’. It’s a question that often intrigues me.
What do you feel is the responsibility of Western composers in Australia when it comes to using Indigenous music? Do you feel it’s important for composers to pay respect to traditional music; to make a point of drawing on Indigenous influences as a way of forming a national sound; something else entirely?
Whole papers are written on this subject and I confess to not being much closer to an answer, or answers, than I have ever been. On the one hand, I sense something hollow and pointless about actively pursuing the notion of an ‘Australian sound’, for a whole lot of reasons. Best to be as personally honest about one’s artistic standards and aims, and leave the nationalism to the politicians and historians. On the other hand, I love the idea of a living artistic heritage to which we’re all contributing, and that heritage might be wonderful and it might, in some mysterious way, come together and collectively express something that we can call ‘Australian’.
I was one of a generation of Australian music students who studied much about the great European musical traditions, and played a great European instrument, and I’m very happy to have done that. But, already at school, our orchestra had played Peter Sculthorpe’s Sun Music series and it had a huge impact, both because of its being the first piece I had ever known by a living composer, and because it reflected Australian experiences and stories. Later, I began to wonder why we had not ever, even once, been directed towards the music of our Indigenous colleagues, and it was starkly brought home to me once, at an occasion I’ll never forget.
Some time in the late 1980s, I was invited to represent Australia at a concert for the Queen Mother. Musicians from all over the Commonwealth gathered in London to play before the royal family. I was sandwiched between two Inuit throat singers from Canada and a nose flute player from the Solomon Islands. I was asked to play Chopin. If I had my time again, I would have insisted on playing Sculthorpe, but I was young and obedient, but felt totally out of place and ridiculous. It’s at a time like that one realises that it is really important, not just to play well and to play good music, but to make a contribution that is meaningful, both to oneself and to the community from which one comes. That’s probably the best reason I can give, personally, for finding ways to be embedded in one’s own culture, and right at the core of our culture are the music and stories of our Indigenous people.
What advice would you give to emerging composers who are looking to draw on traditional music in their works?
Don’t be hesitant to look to any source for inspiration, and some of the best sources are very close to home. Everyone finds their own special interests, for sure, but we do share certain heritages that are there because they have common meanings. What is great about these collective bodies is that they are, by their very nature, not set in stone: the whole point of folklore is its way of reflecting and passing on local meaning, changing and adapting to changes in the times in which generations pass through, inviting participation. I love the fact that some of the songs and fiddle tunes I have studied and incorporated were known to my forebears, some of whom (like my own father) were avid amateur musicians.
In all this, I’m trying to develop and grow, too, and learned an important lesson in writing the clarinet quintet. That is, my sense of unease at incorporating an Indigenous theme stemmed from an uncertainty about whether it was a respectful thing to do. Despite talking to academics about it, it was when I was put in touch with one of the elders over at Fitzroy Crossing that I was first advised that the best way to go about engaging with Indigenous music is to engage with Indigenous musicians. So, that’s what I’m doing now, and very excited at a couple of projects in the offing. Stay tuned!
And your latest project is with Omega Ensemble’s album – fantastic to see your music will be recorded here. As a composer, have you been involved in many crowdfunding campaigns before? How have you felt the transition into social media has fit into your musical career?
No, I haven’t, although I have contributed to a couple of projects mounted by colleagues. I do like social media, being a Facebook person, off and on. It seems to me that the best that social media has to offer can be a boon for musicians, because of the possibilities for us to have contact and interact with people of like mind and people who want to hear us and support us because they like our music, not to mention the opportunities for us to network and collaborate with musical colleagues. Crowdfunding, in particular, is a really interesting and helpful development. I have been greatly encouraged by having virtually all of my commissions for new works funded by private individuals, couples or groups of music-lovers, all of whom like my music enough to want to support it financially. It’s a far cry from going cap-in-hand to the Australia Council, and I think that the closer relationship that is engendered between musicians, composers and patrons is a wholly positive thing.
Support the Omega Ensemble’s debut album through this Pozible campaign, and you’ll hear Ian Munro’s Songs from the Bush alongside works by George Palmer and Mozart.
Images supplied. Ian Munro credit Keith Saunders.
