Herein is a selection of musical compositions written by me in 2016, and early 2017. They can broadly be categorised as of a Western and Japanese genre. All compositions were written using a open source software called Musescore. While being freely available, the compositions IMHO are original and well conceived. I am very proud of them. They represent a time of deep contentment in creative activity, and certain will become proudly my serious early works.
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Although I never took to a career in music, music has certainly been a major part of my development and life. From an early age I was introduced to classical and popular works. A key moment in my musical appreciation was a morning visiting my backyard neighbour, Jeff Mitchell. He introduced me to the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. We both took great pleasure in listening g to his recording over and over. I eventually purchased my own copy. Another pivotal moment was meeting for the very first time, my estranged father. From an early infant age he had left my sister and I and turned up at our house n Hunter's Hill.
What would follow was a deeply frustrating relationship where a combination of distance, he living in San Francisco, and a personality that seemed to me very cold and interpersonal. I now look back on this in a different light. My father gave generously in the form of musical works. He played classical guitar one night in my Aunt Sylvia's house, and that turned me to a life long love of the guitar. He also left me a copy of Die Zauberflote - The Magic Flute, by Mozart. Written on the front libretto sleave notes were:" I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. I certainly think this was the case. Over the years he would give generously two guitars, guitar music, and a guitar string strung 'lute'.
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My musical journey would see me turning the pages of the King's school chief music master, Keith Asboe. A small man with a sharp mind and extraordinary facility on the pipe organ. I would frequently have the opportunity to turn the pages of such works as the Widow Tocatta, and Prelude and Fugue of J.S Bach. While not pursuing music as a mainstream subject, I studied the Classical guitar under a very serious woman who almost always wore black, Carol Britton. Carol would make sounds like nothing I could imagine. I would so look forward to turning up to her classes each week. They were held in a tiny room at the old school.
One very important defining moment was a class I attended, in which I had done enormous practise. I played the Valse from the Brazilian Popular Suite by Heitor Villa Lobos, and was very shocked by the reaction of my playing to my teacher. Mrs Briton had immediately said: 'You gave talent Michael, but if don't put any feeling in the music, then take up the trumpet, the guitar is a special insrrument'. I can remember feeling very disappointed and frustrated. But I took her works seriously, and the following week she was delighted with my playing. At the time I suffered a poor self esteem. I was lonely and only after befriending a girl from the neighbouring school, did I find some happiness while at boarding school.
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Some years later I enrolled in a Diploma in Musicology at the Canberra School of Music. I was obsessed with the lute at the time and tried to make one myself. (I had sold my father's Spanish Ramirez in Sydney and purchased a Renaissance lute), was mess of a job and finally got up enough funds to have my father's guitar-lute transformed into a viable theorbo 14 course Baroque lute. I tried to specialise in the lute music of Bach, but there was no one suitable to support my passion and interest. Indeed the school was dominated by the Classical guitar and many thought the lute was a out dated redundant instrument. I was even told my a senior lecturer that Bach represented ' dead, white western male's music, suggesting it was inappropriate for our times.
I have forgotten to mention that my interest in the lute and guitar flourished when I set up a Web site called Bach plucked. Com Here I reviewed and specialised in the review of great guitar and lutenist musicians who had recorded Bach. I wrote reviews and for free I received their hard efforts at recording them I delighted at the number of hits, and in it's day, in the 1990's a flourishing Web site at the early days of the Internet, was quite an achievement. Regrettably, my attempt to go the musical direction had floundered and I returned to my career as a Urban Planner, shortly after marrying, and taking me on a career in the UK, and then on ground Master planning projects in the Middle East.
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So my journey in music has been a long one. Now at fifty-five years I seem to have come a full circle and at a pleasantly satisfying stage of my musical development. Having taken on a passion again playing and recording works on the classical guitar in Oman and Saudi Arabia, I returned to Australia to resume a more humble position as a Landscape Architect, and with my free time publish my photography and write music.
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After returning to Australia from Saudi Arabia, having worked on the KAAR Mecca redevelopment project, I stayed as a boarder with my cousin Sarah, in Canberra. Overweight and in Ill-health, my almost twelve months living and working in the Kingdom had taken it's toll. I returned a near physical and mental wreck. Time back in Australia gave me the opportunity to resume a healthy lifestyle again. Fresh water out of a tape, mild climate, bicycle replacing the enormously stressful commuting in a car, in the most dangerous country to drive, in the world, enabled me to get my health back again.
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While time quickly passed considering potential job options as a Landscape Architect, an opportunity to spend three months to study a three stringed Japanese instrument was suggested. The instrument, the shamisen, I knew very little about, with my only real knowledge being the koto and the Shukahachi. It had been proposed that learning to play a three stringed instrument, versus the twenty-sixed stringed Baroque lute, should be a easily accomplished! Little did I know that the rigor to practice the Shamisen having a Master sensei, (Japanese teacher) would really test me. At the time of my departure I was again playing my Baroque lute, and it was suggested I take it over with me to play in a potential concert in Tokyo, the city where I was to reside during my stay with Umehura-Sensei.
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My two months in Chofu City was both spiritually enlightening, paradoxically frustrating. My room in Mrs Umehura-Sensei villa was small, and with the combination of extreme humidity and high temperatures, I did not feel very comfortable. To make things worse, the necessary discipline of a minimum of two hours of practice per day, after a period of excitement due to the novelty of learning such an unusal instrument, started to where thin. Efforts to keep my Baroque lute in tune was a struggle, and I sensed that the time on the Baroque lute was not appreciated.
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I hold no blame on Mrs Umehura-Sensei. Indeed, even I would not have predicted that my time there would be frustrating. Mrs Emura tried very hard to make me comfortable. It just simply was a case that after my long stressful period in Saudi Arabia, my heart was just not into a strict practise routine. Indeed, the problem was more fundamental that this. Practice and experimentation on the Shamisen, beyond learning by rote, Japanese children's songs, was considerably frowned upon. My greatest pleasure was to attend the various festivals at the Jindaiji temple, and to take day trips to various gardens and important places in Tokyo. On two occasions I took the Shinkansen to Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. One of those trips to Hiroshima. All such outings were extraordinarily enjoyable. Separate from the stress and rigours of the Shamisen practice and lessons, I really came to love the country, it's people, it's rich culture. I even came to a realisation that one day I may revisit playing the Shamisen and enjoy it.
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ABOUT MY COMPOSITIONS
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In general terms, writing music comes very easily for me. I am not a musicology expert. My knowledge of strict rules relating to harmony and music structure is intuitive rather than academic. I write music more like a painter goes about dabbing paint on a canvass. I have an idea and structure in mind, and then I go about trying to create it. To a large extend it comes about but along the journey, new discoveries occur along the way.
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CONCERTO FOR HARP & CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
The Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra is a first attempt to write a concerto: a work for a solo instrument with a story to be told woven with an Orchestra. The original idea was to write a concerto in the style of Villa Lobo's guitar concerto. I even set up the instrument combination based on this beautiful work. The empty electronic canvas looked bear and I just started to consider the structure in my head. I quickly decided I preferred the harp rather than the guitar. In real life this might be different, but subconsciously I think I associated the Western harp as having a delicate sound more like a koto, perhaps even the banjo-like sound of the Shamisen.
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The concerto took shape very quickly and I simply started to write it in a joyous, happy style with more and more the thought that it would become a concerto for flute and harp. Only when I started writing the cadenza for the first movement, did I persuade myself that the work would put the harp above the flute. At some point I may revisit this and incorporate the flute as a type of duelling between it and the harp as a final cadenza.
The second and third movements were written over two days. The second movement was inspired by the memory of the huge crowds of people moving through Tokyo Metro station during the Obon Festival while I was a student there. I wanted a sombre tone in the second movement. The listener still a letter to hear the original theme but with some thought towards Pathos.
Shortly after writing the concerto and sharing it amongst friends on the Internet, a work colleague, who I'd also a musician commented that the work is rather Japanese influenced. I found this comment curious and at the same time delighted that there is within me a Japanese voice, for I believe that elements of the Japanese thinking and culture us strongly part of me.
VARIATIONS IN SAKURA SAKURA FOR SHAMISEN
The solo work for Shamisen was written over a day but was amended over a series of days. It is a series of variations based on the most famous Japanese song: Sakurai Sakurai, or cherry blossom. I have recorded and always enjoy the Yocoh variations for classical guitar, but here I have written my own variations based on my own mind-voice. The tremolo part would be very challenging to play on the three stringed Shamisen.
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TAKING TEA IN RIKUGI-EN GARDENS
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A short composition utilising Japanese and Chinese percussion instruments. One of the finest garden of Tokyo is the Rikugi-en å…義園 . Even before I left the shores of Australia, I was advised to make a visit to this famous historic garden. Rikugi-en , or Garden of the Six Principles of Poetry, is a three dimensional garden of a narrative design based on the six elements in waka Japanese poetry. The waka Principles [1] are:
1. the Suasive
2. the Description
3. the Comparison
4. the Evocative Imagery
5. the Elegantia
6. the Eulogies
Rikugi-en is a garden of more than three hundred years of the Edo period. It is regarded to be one of the only gardens in Tokyo which has a continuous history of the original design, going back to the end of the seventeenth century. The construction of the park took place between 1695 and 1702 and was headed by Tanagisawa Yoshiyashu under the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. [2] After Yanagisawa's death, the gardens were neglected, but later Iwasaki Yataro, the founder of Mitsubishi, purchased Rikugi-en is a gardens in 1878 and restored it. [3]. In 1938, it was donated to the Tokyo government, and in 1953, listed as a special place of scenic beauty by the Japanese government.
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THE ANGUISH LANGUISHING MIND CALLS FOR PEACE
An experimental work aimed for peace and meditation. In a world where rural to urban movements of peoples increase year by year, and with the pressures of all aspects of city living, including noise pollution, creating music-like spaces, are so important. It may not be 'sounds' in the purely traditional sense, but places that are restful, calming, and offer experiences of contemplation, can be music like in the approach we take in our designs. Recently, I started exploring music composition which utilised a musical score comprising Japanese instruments. Time spent in Japan learning the three stringed Shamisen, and at the same time playing the Baroque lute and wandering the great gardens of Japan, gave me an insight into the role both art-forms can play, to create and foster environments that nurture, and replenish the human soul.
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SYLVIUS IN KYOTO
At the time of writing, SYLVIUS in Kyoto is my most current and experimental compositions. What if It is an imaginary work that gives me scope to explore the hybrid of Western and Oriental (Japanese) musical genres. The supersition is: what musical works would have transpired had SYLVIUS worked and composed in the royal courts of Japan?
Sylvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 1687 – 16 October 1750) was a German composer, an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Frederich Handel. He was also the highest paid musician in the Dresden Royal Court, and was legendary in his day for the quality of sound he produced from the instrument. Born in Grottkau near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, (also a lutenist) Like G.F.Handel, he spend time as a composer in Italy. He served at courts in Breslau, Rome, and finally in Dresden, where he wrote an enormous body of music, the vast majority of which is for the Baroque lute only, some chamber music, and that is where the problem exists. His music is exquisite and harmonically inventive, but the instrument he wrote for has been redundant for at least two centuries. Only in the early 21st century was it revived, and only over the last two to three decades, many of his works have been recorded.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME: PACKINGTON POUND
Variations on the Renaissance lute tune: Packington Pound. Wikipedia notes that: "... Packington's Pound is an English Broadside ballad that dates back, roughly, to the last quarter of the 17th century. It is most recognized by its tune, and, in fact, more tunes were set to "Packington's Pound" than ballads named "Packington's Pound." Claude Simpson in "The British Broadside Ballad and its Music" writes: "This [Packington's Pound] is the most popular single tune associated with ballads before 1700." Extant copies of the ballad can be found at the National Library of Scotland"...."
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THE VARIATIONS ON THE ADAGIO THEME BY TOMASO ALBINONI
My work is based on a single musical 'hit', the famous Adagio in g minor by the Italian Baroque composer, Tomaso Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751). In his day, Albinoni wrote predominately operas, but it is his instrumental music which appeals to contemporary listeners of today. Some even doubt that this Adagio is his authorship. Part of problem is the destruction of many of his original manuscripts during the Second World War. Wikipedia notes:
The famous "Adagio in g minor" for violin, strings and organ, the subject of many modern recordings, is by some thought to be a musical hoax composed by Remo Gialotto. However, a discovery by musicologist Muska Mangano, Giazotto's last assistant before his death, brought up new findings. Among Giazotto's papers, she discovered a modern but independent manuscript transcription of the figured bass portion and six fragmentary bars of the first violin, "bearing in the top right-hand corner a stamp stating unequivocally the Dresden provenance of the original from which it was taken". This provides support for Giazotto's account that he did base his composition on a source.[1]
Whether hoax or not, it remains a beautiful theme, worthy of further musical exploration. In writing my version, I use less pathos hence a milder melancholic tone or mood.
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