BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you haven’t experienced the live performance of a particular piece of music, does that mean the music isn’t worthy of being heard?
Certainly not. And that’s the message From Her We Hear is setting out to share.
The concert is a showcase of the works composed by non-binary and female-identifying Australian composers the world hasn’t heard enough of. Well, we are ready to listen — and mezzo soprano Alexandra Mathew and soprano Teresa Duddy are making it happen.
From Her We Hear will take place this International Women’s Day, and features a collection of works from Nat Bartsch, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Margaret Sutherland, and Isabel Hede. Oh, and there’ll be a big screen with visuals from Gemma Horbury, too.
Hi Teresa and Alexandra. You’re presenting a pretty special event as part of IWD, which features works of non-binary and female-identifying composers from Australia. Tell us how the idea for From Her We Hear came about.
TERESA: Back in 2017, I heard Natalie Williams, lecturer in composition at the Australian National University, speak on ABC radio about the lack of Australian female music being heard. Whilst I was already aware of this, I realised that as a performer I had an opportunity to program whatever repertoire I wanted in a concert, and I had the drive to create new projects.
I contacted Natalie to say that I had heard the program, and would love to chat about how I could go about finding and performing new Australian works. Natalie was incredibly generous with her time and experience, suggesting communities of female composers to reach out to, and ways to workshop compositions into various performance opportunities.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve collected compositions by current composers and, in the process, discovered a community of performers, educators, and composers who were all keen to be a part of this particular project on 8 March 2019.
Whilst this concert was initially planned as an event for female performers performing the works of Australian females, I want it noted that it is also a space for those who identify as female and non-binary. There is often a tendency for IWD events to ignore the contributions of individuals from those communities, and all reference to females here includes those who identify themselves as such, or who identify as non-binary.
ALEXANDRA: As a classical singer, the majority of the repertoire that I perform — both new and old — is by men. Of course, I love the music, but for some time I also felt that, by not actively seeking out music by women and non-binary composers, there was a huge gap in my repertoire and knowledge.
With that in mind, a couple of years ago I started collating scores and putting together ideas for an IWD concert. Teresa and I spoke briefly about our similar motivation to present such a concert, and when I discovered that Teresa already had something in the works for IWD 2019, I jumped at the chance to get involved.
You’ve described the event as shedding light on “often forgotten music”. How did this perceived rarity of female- and non-binary-identifying composers in concert programming help shape your event?
T: One of the great things about seeking out new music is the people and communities you meet along the way. Some of the people who are involved in this concert, I have already worked with musically; and others I’ve seen perform or have watched what they’re creating from the sidelines. There are also those I’ve never met, but they’ve worked with some of the other performers — so it’s a real mixed bag!
For the direction, I simply had a brief that I wanted to create a concert featuring […] the works of Australian female and non-binary composers. Some of the compositions involve instruments and electronics, others are more traditional voice and piano works, and some are sound explorations. I love a diverse genre-bending concert.
A: Some of the music seems literally to be ‘forgotten’ — I had to enlist the help of two University of Melbourne academics (Dr Jen Hill and Dr Suzanne Robinson) in order to hunt down vocal scores by Australian female composers.
While a reasonable quantity of scores is held in the university’s collections, much of it is not available to loan from the library, and some of it exists only in manuscript form. Similarly, most of the music that I found seems never to have been recorded, which is amazing considering we eventually programmed music by two of Australia’s greatest 20th-Century composers, Margaret Sutherland and Peggy Glanville-Hicks.
Having said that, the fact that some of the music we’ve selected is relatively unknown makes it even more exciting to perform for IWD.
Alexandra, you’ve selected Margaret Sutherland for your performance. What are the songs you’ll be singing, and why do they resonate with you?
A: In 2015, under the guidance of Dr Jen Hill at the University of Melbourne, I curated a small exhibition dedicated to Margaret Sutherland, about which I wrote an article for Collections magazine. That exercise piqued my interest in Sutherland’s vocal music, and it also acquainted me with the little-known late Australian soprano Elsa Haas, who championed the work of local composers. Not only did I stumble across some of Sutherland’s beautiful songs, I was also inspired by Haas to seek out and perform new music and overlooked music.
As it happens, Haas donated her collection of scores to the University of Melbourne Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library, a couple of which we are using for this performance.
That aside, the two Sutherland songs I selected for this performance resonated for their beauty and simplicity and, dare I say, feminist undertones. They Called Her Fair reflects on the absence of vocabulary we have for describing the beauty of a woman’s mind, and Meeting of Sighs describes a lifelong unrequited love, without resorting to the predictable trope of fetishising a woman’s beauty and appearance.
The two Sutherland duets Teresa and I will be performing together — The Green Singer and Chez-nous (Tobruk) — were actually originally intended as part-songs for children’s voices, but they work very well as duets for soprano and mezzo soprano.
Teresa, similarly, talk us through your choice of Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Sutherland.
T: I had heard of Margaret Sutherland before, but not of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, and have never performed either of their music. It was Alexandra who brought the pieces to my attention, and I chose them as they work well to build on the repertoire Alexandra is performing. It’s also been wonderful drawing on her knowledge of the composers and discovering what I may otherwise have missed.
A: Dr Suzanne Robinson is a Peggy Glanville-Hicks authority, and it was she who encouraged me to seek out more of Glanville-Hicks’ vocal music beyond the better-known Come Sleep. I was astounded to discover that at least one of the songs remains unrecorded. After reading through the scores, I thought that they would sound beautiful in Teresa’s rich soprano voice, and it will be a treat to hear them performed on the night.
There are five musicians featuring in this event. How did you find the collaborative process, and the culture of collaboration, as you put this event together?
T: I asked Alexandra and Kay Cai (Pianist) if they would like to be involved in this project, as I had worked with them before and knew they supported performance of lesser-known music. From there, it was a process of curating a diverse concert featuring a variety of instruments and compositional elements.
I approached musicians whose work I had been following for a while, some of whom were able to perform on the night and others who chose to have their compositional work performed by other collaborators.
Many of these performers also work as teachers, educators, and artists; and it’s always a wonderfully creative process determining what role they will take on the night!
Why did you decide to work with Gemma Horbury and how does her artwork reflect the theme of the night?
T: Gemma is a great example of the range of skills [of] many musician-artists. Nat Grant, whose composition is heard on the night, suggested Gemma for the visuals and that’s how she came to be involved. I’m really excited to see what she creates.
Last year, she premiered an epic new work — The Women — which featured her compositions for chamber orchestra; fusing jazz, classical, and hip-hop with improvisation, projections, and an immersive audio installation underneath the audience seating. She’s completing Masters research into building sustainable careers for artists by emphasising our role as agents of change and community builders.
What message do you hope concertgoers will take away from this event?
T: The message is that if we want to hear and see more Australian music, and the music of women in particular, then we need to actively support that. Whether it’s by attending performances, putting on creative projects, or even commissioning new works, we need to make it the norm.
A: Australia has produced some first-rate female composers, whose music deserves to be sought-out, heard, and celebrated. Unless we strive to engage with, listen to, and perform the music of women — and Australian women, in particular — that music will run the risk of falling into obscurity. And, as performers, we should not be afraid to seek out previously unpublished or unrecorded music! The fact that it has been forgotten is not a sign that it’s less worthy or less valuable. The great music of the Western canon — masterpieces by composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, and Mozart — is universally accepted as worthy art without gender. Why can’t the forgotten music by our women be the same?
The same goes for the Clara Schumanns and Fanny Mendelssohns of the musical world — while they are probably the best-known and most mainstream of the female composers, their music is far less-frequently performed than the music of their male counterparts. Inclusion of such repertoire in concert programs and educational syllabuses should not be sniffed at for its mainstream status; it should be as acceptable and as reasonable as the programming of music by the aforelisted men.
See From Her We Hear on International Women’s Day, 6.30pm and 8pm (two shows) March 8 in Long Play, North Fitzroy. The concert will feature pianist Kay Cai, soprano Teresa Duddy, clarinettist Brigid Burke, violinist Isabel Hede, and mezzo soprano Alexandra Mathew, with visuals by Gemma Horbury.
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