Three Australian Bush Songs

Contents:
(i) Dawn
(ii) Birds
(iii) Sunset

Text:
(i) Dawn

Silence greets the glowing orb at dawn,
Lighting bush with misty innocence
Dry Harsh Hard Dark Sparse
This land that is lit by whisp’ring rays

Fire and Gold, they dissolve the morning dew
Waking the birds, shaking the shadows from their wings
The day comes alive with calls and cries form bleary throats
Bringing life and harmony unto this land

This Dry Harsh Hard Dark land
This land that is lit by whisp’ring rays of dawn.

(ii) Birds

Cah-oo-woh
S s ci-ca-da

Morning chorus,
Birds sing for us.
Welcome us in their own way to this day.
Morning chorus,
Birds sing for us.
Welcome us to this new day.
Currawongs all sing their song
With kookaburras and cicadas
Morning chorus,
Birds sing for us.
Welcome us to this new day.

S s cicada
Cah-oo-woh
Kah koo kah koo kah koo koo

Through the day they sing away,
a-cooing, wooing under rays of sun.
Caressing, feeding, resting
in the shade of trees they hide from
heat of day they sing away,
a-cooing, wooing under rays of sun.
Caressing, feeding, resting
All these cries are part of our big

Birdsong chorus,
They sing for us
Welcome us in their own way to this day.
Birdsong chorus,
They sing for us
Welcome us to this new day.
Currawongs all sing their song
With kookaburras and cicadas
Birdsong chorus,
They sing for us
Welcome us to this new day.

[Bird noises]

(iii) Sunset

Ssss-sunset
Ssss-sunset here
Ssss-sunset here, the image is furnace
Molten metal the sky
And glow that sinks in the pool of the purple night.

Summer beckons,
The heat it threatens to harm,
But the warmth of the day
Now sinks away to sleepy stars

Sunset here, the image is furnace
Molten metal the sky
And glow that sinks in the pool of the purple night.

Reviews:

“A most interesting trio of songs from Down Under, “Three Australian Bush Songs,” may be the most inventive offering. Over eight minutes long, the piece segues from “Dawn” to “Birds” to “Sunset.” It starts with a mellifluous and fulgent chorale sound of moving chords, then drops to a whisper, gathers and rises into a chorus of cawing and “coo-coo-rus,” a veritable avian cacophony, and winds down to snake hisses, for crying out loud. It ends with a solo female voice blessing the sunset. Cool!”
– Mariss McTucker reviewing the CD Dolce Canto | A Cappella Around the World, March 1, 2011

CD Releases:
Dolce Canto | A Cappella Around the World
The University of Newcastle Chamber Choir | This Land
Video Link:
University of Mississippi Concert Singers conducted by Dr. Donald Trott. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYF1VCuTJx4

Common Questions regarding Three Australian Bush Songs:

1. What were the circumstances of your work ’3 Australian Bush songs’ being written? (When, where and why)

The 3 Bush songs started life with the title 3 Bush Carols. They were written for inclusion in a staged Christmas concert by the UWA Collegium Musicum under the direction of Margaret Pride titled A Bush Christmas, in which members of the choir (of which I was a member) dressed up in colonial costume and performed a range of Australian carols , including several by William G James and Sculthorpe. Over the next two years, I revised the work – lengthening the movements, removing the references to Christmas – and it was finally given its premiere as 3 Bush Songs in 1994 at the National ANCA conference in Brisbane.

2. Where was the piece first performed (by whom and what audience) and how was it received?

The 3 Bush Carols version was 1st performed in Winthrop Hall, UWA in December 1991 and was very enthusiastically received by a General public audience of 1000. Similarly, the bush songs premiere in July 1994 was very successful, with the audience being dominated by specialist choral practitioners. Both premieres were by UWA Collegium Musicum under the direction of Margaret Pride.

3. Do you feel the piece is significant in anyway/ or representative of a particular style/ theme in Australian Music of the 20th century?
This is hard to answer, but I am heavily influenced by Australian landscape – an influence common to many Australian composers from Grainger through Sculthorpe to Edwards and Stephen Leek. While there are particularly Australian elements in the work, most specifically the bird calls and extra-musical noises, the harmony and style of writing, especially in the 3rd movement, is very English choral. I don’t mind this as a reference – it somehow reflects my English heritage – a transplanted culture in an ancient land. It is also pragmatic. I wrote it to the strengths of the ensemble, so its simple harmonic language is as much influenced by my wish for it ‘sit’ for the ensemble, as any particular aesthetic choice.

4. Comments on your use of:
- Pitch organization
The first movement is based on the shape of the rising sun – an ever-expanding extension outwards from one note (which I think of as the 1st peek of the sun over the horizon). After this mirrored first phrase, the second phrase moves upwards at twice the rate as downwards, creating new harmonic possibilities. The process of expansion out from and diminution back to a single note occurs throughout the movement. The pitch collections of the 1st two movements are obviously modal in character, if not in strict content. At the beginning of the 3rd movement, the flattened 6th is utilized less in a melodic or modal context, and more for the texture of its semitone clash with the 5th. The movement’s pitch collection is governed by the organum-like use of parallel 5ths, but it sits very much in a Schubertian G minor, complete with a quasi mediant [non] modulation .

- Rhythm
While the outer movements are obviously less rhythmically vital, the central movement is driven by homophonic rhythmic activity. Through singing with choirs, I found that rhythmic counterpoint was very time consuming in terms of rehearsal time, and as Collegium operated under strict time constraints, the simplicity of the rhythmic invention made the work more performable.

- Texture
I was eager to keep the spartan, dry nature of the bush intact in the texture of the work. I love both clusters (hence the opening of the work) and bare fifths and colouristically, these occupy very different territory, so the work has within it a tension between the dense and the open. The bare harmonies – with widely spaced chords and a prevalence of 4ths and 5ths dominate, and are intended to reflect the openness of the bush experience. The free improv bird calls at the end of the 1st movement was also an experiment in texture – it sounds fantastic when done well, but relies on the group as a whole, and the choir director specifically, to control the ebb and flow. These days, I would try and control the texture a little more at this point.

- Meter
Meter in the outer movements changes only when a simple molto rall is unable to create an adequate slowing, so an extra beat is inserted. In the central movement, the 7/8 meter is interspersed with 4/4 bars for two reasons. The first is technical – to allow for a snatched breath at the end of phrases. The second is musical. 7/8 as a base meter is much less regimented in its feel than 4/4, however if sung constantly, ends up feeling as industrial and city-like as 4/4. In interspersing the 2 meters, I was hoping to keep the sense of dance and rhythmic vitality without a sense of industry or technology intruding – just as I hope the bush maintains that sense of natural and organic existence.

- Colour
I was eager to utilize a range of colours in the work, and was lead by the text in my colouristic choices. Hence “the purple night” is very rich, “the day comes alive” is open and uplifting, “innocence” is open and uncluttered.

- Dynamics
Again influenced by the pragmatics of writing for the voice, the dynamics are often reflective of tessitura – the higher the louder. Rarely do I ask for high pianissimos as only the best choirs make it sound effective.

- Instrumentation
The choir is obviously acappella and divisi, with a choice specifically made to keep the sounds produced from within the ranks of the choir and not from an external source like CD or percussion. I think that this is one of the work’s strengths. Sculthorpe is my conceptual influence here – having played his orchestral works, his rendering of Australian birds in the orchestral setting is wonderful and evocative. I have attempted the same here with the human voice.

- Form
The whole work has a traditional slow-fast-slow structure with each of the movements having recapitulations of material within the movement, but no sharing of material between movements. It is structurally organic, rather than formalist, meaning material recurs when I sensed it was correct to do so, and not when an independently conceived structure determined it.

5. Comments on the social, aesthetic or philosophical pursuits of ’3 Australian Bush songs’
I wrote this work when I was very young – it is my Opus 1 really. Since then I have developed stronger views on my relationship to landscape, which may answer this question better, as they do deal with many of the extra-musical ideas contained in the Bush Songs. Since 2001, I have been working with the Elders of the Spinifex lands (from deep central Australia) and my contact with them has made a deep impression on me about what a relationship with the land entails. They live a culture that is utterly and holistically connected to day-to-day life as well as intrinsically linked to country. When driving down a particular track in country, a song will be sung. When at a particular waterhole in a particular season, a song will be sung. When arriving at a new place, a song will be sung. They sing their lives and they sing their country. What this makes me aware of is that the Australian landscape contains a multitude of songs, none of which is mine to sing. Thus, as with Bush Songs, a general and personal response is the only avenue open to me as a white Australian composer, as the ‘true’ song of the country is inherent and cannot be changed. It exists within and of the land. My present day response to this is to collaborate with the elders, and write accompaniments, or parallel works to their traditional songs. This has occurred most recently in Ooldea, an orchestral work due to be premiered early next year. From my present perspective, I am still happy with where the bush songs sit, as they are very general evocations of communal experiences (dawn, birds singing, sunset, heat), and contain no specific geographical references.

6. How do find it being an ‘Australian’ composer in the scope of music?
Part of me thinks that being self-consciously ‘Australian’ as opposed to being actively part of the broader musical community is isolationist and small minded. However, having said that, there are peculiarities common to being a composer in Australia that, in a sense, set us ‘apart’ from the world. This is principally our relationship with landscape and surroundings, and the isolated nature of most of our experiences. This is well catalogued and researched. For me, however, there is also a sense of a certain lightness of being (not superficiality, more self deprecating) that allows crystalline textures to pervade many typical Australian works as opposed to the more densely worked and structured oeuvre of our European contemporaries. Even in the great new-generation modernists Liza Lim and Brett Dean, there is an apparent lightness of touch that eschews the dour heaviness of the European avant-garde and celebrates a country of wit and humour.

1994

Three Australian Bush Songs

for SSAATTBB Chorus