BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
On this year’s International Women’s Day, ABC Classic released Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers. The album maps the contribution to our musical landscape of some of Australia’s foremost female composers.
Through the works of Miriam Hyde and Margaret Sutherland, to Anne Boyd and Peggy Glanville-Hicks, to Sally Whitwell and Elena Kats-Chernin, this album spans decades of the country’s music culture.
We chat with three composers who feature on this CD, and they enlighten us on how we can listen to their remarkable works today.
Nicole Murphy: Spinning Top, 2016.
Spinning Top was inspired by Jarrad Kennedy’s sculpture of the same name, located at the junction of Turbot, Wickham, and Boundary streets in Brisbane. Kennedy’s artwork marks the site of the unrealised Holy Name Cathedral, designed by Archbishop James Duhig in the 1920s. The artwork is a scale-model of the dome of the unfinished cathedral that rests on its tip in the midst of the city high rises, like a spinning top that has come to rest.
The artwork is reflected in the music through perpetual rhythmic motion and the cyclic nature of repetition. The bright mood of the piece reflects the child-like nature of a spinning top toy. It is intended to be a joyous and celebratory piece, honouring the generous spirit of the commissioners’ intent: to encourage greater support of the arts.
This album celebrates a rich history of Australian composition, showcasing music by composers who happen to be women. The release of this compilation is an important step towards correcting the absence of diversity that has historically existed in classical music, and the title Women of Note aptly draws attention to this. It is my hope that a future compilation of this nature would be the norm rather than the exception, allowing it to simply be titled Composers of Note.
Brenda Gifford: Bardju (Footprints) arr. Jessica Wells, 2017.
The following is about the piece Bardju, and the role culture plays in my composition process.
Bardju represents our collective journey, and tells us that we should tread lightly on Mother Earth; and it also represents my personal journey as a Yuin woman. Through this piece, I recalled my memories of country.
My music grounds me in, and gives voice to, my culture. I do note create in a vacuum, and my culture is at the core of my creativity.
Olivia Bettina Davies: Crystalline, 2018.
Like most of my other works, Crystalline isn’t about anything in particular. Generally speaking, in the early stages of composing I think about the kind of soundworld I want to create and I take a lot of inspiration from the instruments I’m writing for.
At the beginning of the project, we received an artist brief from the Hush Foundation, and I spent quite some time considering what my interpretation of it could be. I wanted the piece to be calm, but not stagnant; uplifting, but not dramatic.
The title Crystalline stems from initial sketches of the piece, as I was trying to find a process that would connect and develop the opening material gradually. I eventually abandoned this process-driven approach, yet my ideas of individually emerging sounds and repeating patterns still made their way in, albeit intuitively. What resulted was a piece that I believe reflects my interest in musical space, timbral nuance, and the transformation of sound.
On an album as wide-ranging as this, the diversity of the music speaks for itself and, although it presents just a small sample of works, it is interesting to listen to the mix of old and new, and to hear the character and style of the works progress. But the album’s greatest contribution to the Australian music landscape lies in its promotion of women as quality music makers. By celebrating older works in this way, we reshape our perspective of the past and, by doing that, re-write the history of what the Australian music landscape is. To then include new works from living composers, the album also encourages a relationship with the future of the Australian music.
It is this visibility of women in music, and the inclusion and celebration of new music that, for me, is what makes this album such an important document and I hope there are more to come. On a personal level, to be included on the album as an emerging composer tells me that I can be, and that I am, a contributing voice to the evolution of our musical landscape, which is all the encouragement I need.
Listen to Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers on your favourite platform.
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Images supplied. Steph captured by Graziano di Martino.
