Songwriting
for solo piano (2021)
16’
Winner of the Royal College of Music Contemporary Music Competition Composition Prize
Morning Field
Waltzing Matilda
Humpty Dumpty
Red Ochre
First performed (IV): Royal College of Music Prizewinners’ Concert, September 16 2022, Rob Hao, piano.
First complete performance: Bloomsbury Festival, ‘Around the World’, October 20 2024, Rob Hao, piano
Songwriting is a suite of four pieces, each inspired by a preexisting theme and sound world. I selected these four ideas/themes because they each generated contrasting musical results to form a set. The themes chosen all have some bearing my own experiences and to wider Australia. The original material has been manipulated mostly through deconstruction and/or varying degrees of ornamentation.
In particular, ‘Red Ochre’ is inspired by the sound world of the didgeridu. It is not intended as a direct transcription, but rather a pianistic expression of particular aspects of the instrument, such as cross-rhythms and unique harmonic resonances. The other pieces include more recognisable themes: ‘Waltzing Matilda’: Percy Grainger wrote in the preface to his ‘Colonial Song’ about the tendency of rich, full-bodied singing in lands with harsh landscapes. ‘Waltzing Matilda’ looks at weaving and extended vocal lines in pianistic textures. ‘Morning Field’ is inspired by Chinese folk music and the way it ornaments medodies. The sound world of ‘Humpty Dumpty’ - a music box, and the piece generally follows the text of the nursery rhyme. All together, pitch material has been, in part, influenced by the existing sound worlds that each of the found material is related to, however, particular intervallic features have also been integrated as well as hints to bi-tonality or -modality in many passages.