Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Art Singer on piano  
© Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

From 23 to 27 September, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music will be presenting an Art Song Festival which feature songs written by Australian composers performed by some of Australia's leading exponents of this genre. Presented by the collaborative piano, vocal and composition units of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the festival will feature performers from the Melbourne Conservatorium and from Germany, and composers from Australia and Europe. The festival will explore the relationship between the poetry and the musical setting in art songs with a special focus on those composed by Australian composers, exploring the intricate relationship between the voice and piano and bringing greater awareness to the role of the pianist in the performance of art song.

An art song could be described as the perfect combination of music and literature, incorporating four elements: the poetry, composer, singer, and pianist. The composer adopts a poem, immersing the words into a musical setting using his or her own harmonic and melodic language. The song is then a synthesis of music and words, a complete picture, which is then realised by the singer and pianist who create an interpretation both of the music and the poem. Composers and performers often discover hidden meanings that were not obviously explicit in the poet's words but which lead to a greater understanding of the poem as a whole. This year's festival aims to explore the connection between the four elements of an art song and will be a combination of lecture recitals, recitals featuring the songs of several different composers and workshops. It will be a wonderful opportunity to present the diversity of Australian composition in this genre and the development of styles from the early twentieth century to the present day.

Monday 25 September will focus on Australian Art Songs of the past. Many of these songs will have been discovered in archival collections still in manuscript form, only published recently and will be given their first ever public performance at the festival. The day will commence with a lecture recital by Dr. Michael Halliwell and David Miller featuring songs written during the First World War. That Bloody Game is a recording featuring songs which respond to the changing circumstances with an emphasis on the Australian experience in that war. These songs were written for the precise purpose of getting men to join up, sometimes shaming them into doing so! They will show how the war affected civilians and celebrated the return of the forces as well as reflecting on the more serious side to which composers of the time responded to the war.

Another session on Monday will feature the composer, Linda Phillips. Melbourne-based composer Linda Phillips (1899-2002) wrote over sixty songs many of which were settings of her own poems. As she was a newspaper critic writing for the Melbourne Sun and the Australian Musical News for many years her contribution to Australian cultural life was in both words and music. Julie Jong Eun Barber and I will present a snapshot of her songs from a recent recording - What secret Hath the Rose?

Roy Agnew (1891-1944) was an internationally successful pianist and teacher and his piano compositions, particularly the seven sonatas, are groundbreaking works. Apart from the seventy or so works for piano he wrote twenty wonderful art songs. These are mostly to the words of English poets such as Percy Blythe Shelley and Alfred Lord Tennyson, but Agnew also set the words of Australian poets such as Zora Cross, Victor Daly and Lois Essen infusing the music with Australian idiom. Songs by Roy Agnew can also be heard on Monday.

Words of the poet John Shaw Neilson were a catalyst for many Australian composers among them, Mirrie Hill, Margaret Sutherland, Alan Tregaskis, David Morris, James Penberthy, Phyllis Batchelor, and Moya Henderson. His much-loved poems Love's Coming and The Green Singer have been set by several composers creating a unique dimension to the interpretation of the words. Narelle Yeo and I will perform some of these songs and discuss the individual musical language differences between the settings.

Raymond Hanson taught at the Sydney Conservatorium for many years. A recital with Wendy Dixon and David Miller will feature some songs by Raymond Hanson as well as a selection by English-born Horace Keats and Fritz Hart. Christina Wilson and Alan Hicks have recently recorded songs by Frederick Septimus Kelly. A recital featuring songs from this recording as well as works by Dorian Le Gallienne can be heard on Monday afternoon. Peggy Glanville-Hicks is not especially remembered for her songs but the better known from her collection - Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - from poems by the American Wallace Stevens will be performed by Janine Harris and Theresa Leung demonstrating the quirky individualism of Peggy Glanville-Hicks.

The composer Meta Overman is not well known on the east coast of Australia. Dutch-born she spent most of the 30 years of her life in Australia in Perth and briefly Melbourne. While in Melbourne she became very good friends with Margaret Sutherland and Dorian Le Gallienne and she and her husband Rob Hyner were instrumental in setting up the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, working with Keith Humble and associates to form a new music hub. Her cycle - Galgenlieder - uses poems by the German Christian Morgenstern and her cycle of three Island Songs are set to words by John Jones of Perth. These two cycles will be performed in their entirety in a Sydney-premiere performance.

Tuesday 26 September will showcase works by those Australian contemporary composers who have established a reputation as composers of art song and have works recorded and published. George Palmer has written several songs cycles and has become almost a leader in that field. The most interesting perhaps is that to words written by Ned Kelly and taken from letters found at the Melbourne jail after Kelly was executed. There are five songs in the cycle - Letters from a Black Snake. The cycle Figures from an Urban Landscape are set to poems by Kenneth Slessor, Bruce Dawes and Judith Wright. Wright also wrote the words to another cycle, The Stubborn Heart. Palmer will introduce and discuss writing for the voice in this recital featuring the three cycles performed by singers Barry Ryan and Tanith Bryce.

John Peterson's cycle Satellite of Love and Fear consists of five songs and two piano interludes and is about 35 minutes in duration. The texts are all about the moon, in some form or another, and come from various poets from various countries around the world. The cycle was the basis of Wendy Dixon's doctoral thesis. She and David Miller will present the cycle with an introduction by the composer. A recital with Opera Australia artist Jane Ede and Louise Scott will present little known works by Peter Sculthorpe, Linda Kouvaras and John Haddock.

The highlight of Tuesday will be a performance by Songmakers Australia artists, Merlyn Quaife and Andrea Katz. The performance with the title The Australian Connection will be a welcome addition to the festival from these two leading Australian performers from Melbourne. Featuring four stunning cycles by Johanna Selleck, Richard Mills, Luke Severn and Keith Humble, the performance will represent aspects of Merlyn Quaife's vast influence and commitment spanning three generations of composers.

On Wednesday, the final day, the festival will showcase composers of the future. A postgraduate composition program that is being supervised by Assoc. Prof. Paul Stanhope called Words, Text, Voices, Music will premiere new song cycles composed especially this year by postgraduate students and will be performed by staff members and conservatorium graduate students. There will also be a new work composed by Anna Hueneke with Anna Fraser (mezzo soprano) and Connor Pendelbury (piano) and a special recital presented by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon.

The Festival of Art Song, 2023 will be held at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 23-27 September 2023. Tickets: $150 for a festival pass or $50 for a day ticket.
More information: https://bit.ly/SCM-FOAS-2023