About the music

Fernando Carulli could hardly be called a well-known composer but amongst guitarists, he is legendary. Born in 1770, the young Carulli grew up in Naples in a well-to-do family and initially learned music theory and cello before taking up the guitar in his teens. Largely self-taught, he quickly became something of a sensation in his home town, and took to touring, first to northern Italy and then to the cultural centres of Vienna and Paris.

Carulli’s extraordinary ability and passion for the guitar led him to explore new techniques, timbres and harmonies. His most famous work, the pedagogical Méthode Complète, is still in use today. He pioneered the development of the six-string guitar, the instrument which would become the modern classical guitar. Later in life he worked with Parisian luthier René Lacôte on a 10-string instrument, the Decacorde.

His first Guitar Concerto is one of the most popular works for guitar surviving from this period. Two themes dominate the lively Allegro, punctuated by virtuosic passages for the guitar soloist. Some manuscripts also show a second movement, marked Pologna – a Polonaise or Polish Dance – but this is rarely played and will be omitted here. The concerto was originally scored for guitar soloist with string quartet, two oboes, two horns and a double bass. The version we hear in this concert is for guitar and string quartet.

© HARRIET CUNNINGHAM 2021

As well as being an award-winning composer, Richard Charlton works as a teacher, conductor, performer and arranger. Largely self-taught, he initially started writing music to expand his own repertoire, but now his works are performed and recorded by many leading Australian and international players, featuring on more than 30 commercial CDs under labels such as ABC Classic, Naxos, Tall Poppies and

Move Records. In 2005 the UK magazine

Classical Guitar described him as producing ‘some of the most inspired and accessible guitar works of the present era’.

Richard uses the guitar in many combinations, collaborating with a diverse range of artists such as Karin Schaupp and Katie Noonan, Slava Grigoryan, Stephanie Jones, Matt Withers and the Acacia Quartet, Tim Kain and Guitar Trek, William Barton and Riley Lee (on the ABC Meditation program Classic Flow with guitarist Steve Allen) and numerous others.

The composer writes:

Cultures all over the world have special dreams and stories about the stars and constellations that make pictures in the sky. The Southern Cross, easily one of the most recognisable constellations of all, has many different legends and stories about it. Southern Cross Dreaming is a synthesis of those legends.

Pinpoints of light (in harmonics) gradually descend in a series of rocking thirds. They coalesce into groups of stars. A melody played in tremolo – rapidly repeated notes giving the impression of longer, sustained notes – rises and falls, changing colour, building in intensity and height.

This piece was written for Karin Schaupp in 2007 and is recorded on her album with Katie Noonan called Songs of the Southern Skies.

© RICHARD CHARLTON

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was already a successful composer in 1932 when he met an artist who would change the course of his musical life. Andrés Segovia (1893–1987) was one of the most celebrated classical guitarists of the 20th century. Born in Linares, Spain, and brought up in Granada, he was, like Fernando Carulli, almost entirely self-taught, and notable for eschewing the popularisation of the flamenco style to concentrate on classical technique and repertoire. By the 1920s, he was a celebrated virtuoso, touring internationally.

The paths of the two men crossed in 1932 in Venice at the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Segovia was impressed by CastelnuovoTedesco’s Quintet for Harp and Piano, and left a note enquiring about a commission. Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote back to say he had never written for guitar. Segovia provided him with some basic information about the instrument and a few examples of works he liked. Soon after, Castelnuovo-Tedesco sent him a set of variations. Segovia’s response was swift and overwhelmingly positive: ‘It is the first time that I find a composer who immediately understands how to write for the guitar.’ From this creative beginning Castelnuovo-Tedesco went on to become one of the 20th century’s foremost composers for guitar, completing over 100 works for the instrument, many of them for Segovia.

Then, in 1938, the Italian government passed its Leggi Razziali (Racial Laws), restricting the civil rights of Jews. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sephardic Jewish ancestry was well known. Life in Europe was looking increasingly dangerous. In 1939 he and his family boarded the SS Saturnia in Trieste, bound for a new life in America.

Thanks to artistic colleagues in high places, including conductor Arturo Toscanini and violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was offered work in Hollywood with MGM, writing film scores. While he is best known for his writing for guitar, his legacy also lives on through some of his films – including Gaslight and And Then There Were None, and for his students, who include André Previn, Henry Mancini and John Williams.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote his Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet in 1950, to a commission from the Music Guild of Los Angeles. Segovia gave the premiere with the Paganini Quartet a year later. An unapologetic romanticist, Castelnuovo-Tedesco describes the work in his autobiography as ‘melodious and serene … written almost in a Schubertian vein’. Indeed, against the backdrop of midcentury modernism, his style is resolutely tonal, but his orchestration – the way he handles the various timbres and textures of these five instruments – is highly innovative. He pits the bowed instruments – violin, viola and cello, all capable of a sustained legato line –against the plucked guitar, with its distinctive attack and ringing but quiet decay, using an ingenious palette of extended techniques. Listen out, for example, to the way he allows intricate guitar passages the space to ring out over the quartet by using an accompaniment of pizzicato, or wispy harmonics, or even silence. And how he layers a luxurious legato melody underneath a glittering cadenza in the guitar.

The work falls into four movements and follows the classic lines of Haydn’s sonata form. The first movement is marked Allegro, vivo e schietto (fast, lively and frank), a feeling captured in the melodic leaps of the opening statement, which contrast with a more chromatic second subject. The second movement, Andante mesto, begins with a soulful melody for viola and is shot through with modal ambiguity – a switching between major and minor intervals evoking a nostalgic quality. Its second theme is marked Souvenir d’Espagne, memory of Spain. The third movement is a bracing Scherzo with two trios, including the irresistible dance rhythm of the Spanish habanera. The fourth movement is also powered by dance, this time by the jagged motor rhythm of a crazy tarantella, until a smoochy habanera reappears, marked Come una canzone popolare – like a popular song. As the work comes to its climax, Castelnuovo-Tedesco layers the two dances one on another and ups the tempo for a thrilling scramble to the end.

© HARRIET CUNNINGHAM 2021

Carl Vine AO is one of Australia’s best known and most frequently performed composers, with an impressive orchestral catalogue featuring eight symphonies and 13 concertos. His piano music is performed around the world and recordings of his music on more than 60 CDs play regularly on Australian radio. He has an extensive range of chamber music alongside various works for film, television, dance and theatre. Although primarily a composer of modern art music, he has undertaken such diverse tasks as arranging the Australian National Anthem and writing music for the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games (Atlanta, 1996).

Born in Perth, he studied piano with Stephen Dornan and composition with John Exton at the University of Western Australia. Moving to Sydney in 1975, he worked as a freelance pianist and composer with a wide range of ensembles, theatre and dance companies over the following decades.

Amongst his most acclaimed scores are Piano Sonata No. 1 (1990) and Poppy (1978) for the Sydney Dance Company, and Choral Symphony (No. 6, 1996) for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. His first six symphonies are available on the ABC Classic double-CD set Carl Vine: The Complete Symphonies performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Much of his chamber music is available on three discs from Tall Poppies Records.

From 2000 until 2019 Carl was Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia. Within that role he was also Artistic Director of the Huntington Estate Music Festival from 2006, and of the Musica Viva Festival (Sydney) from 2008. Carl has been Senior Lecturer in Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music since 2014.

His recent compositions include Zofomorphosis (concerto for piano four hands) for the Grant Park Festival in Chicago, Piano Sonata No.4 for Lindsay Garritson, The Enchanted Loom (Symphony No. 8) for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Five Hallucinations (trombone concerto) for the Chicago and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. The Melbourne Symphony’s recording of Carl’s recent orchestral works, The Enchanted Loom, won the 2022 ARIA Award for Best Classical Album.

In 2014 Carl was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

The composer writes: Endless celebrates the life of Jennifer Bates, a professional architect, project manager and dedicated environmentalist whose life was tragically cut short by a rogue motorist. Jen and her husband travelled widely, working for a year in Bhutan as international volunteers for the Australian government. There Jen became inspired by Buddhist symbolism and especially the ‘endless knot’ – the emblem of this score –signifying the interconnectedness of all things. This composition evinces the positivity and commitment to community contribution that Jen displayed throughout her life. At its heart is a reflective elegy, followed by a celebratory dance inspired by Jen’s much-loved salsa. Endless was commissioned by her mother, Kathryn Bennett, as a living legacy for a precious life that ended too soon.

© CARL VINE 2022

Better known as Benjamin Britten’s assistant and the daughter of Gustav Holst, many of Imogen Holst’s compositions have only had their first performance in recent years. Her daily life was primarily consumed with other musical activities like teaching and arranging music for educational purposes, so her voice as a composer was often relegated in priority. As with many composers, the search for a musical identity was always in her mind, but it wasn’t until her string quintet (composed in 1982) that she declared, ‘Ah, a composer at last.’

The Phantasy Quartet, written in 1928 when she was just 20 years old, holds all the characteristics of an English Pastorale style. The focus on a modal sonority rather than a traditional harmonic structure is reminiscent of Ravel and Debussy’s forays into the string quartet, but one cannot deny the obvious stamp of England’s favourite, Vaughan Williams. Having said that, this piece is not merely a hall of mirrors blurring the aural images of other composers; one gets a sense of Imogen’s generosity, passion and intellect in Phantasy. There are many voicings of chords which on first playing seem cumbersome but in fact, they are absolutely perfect in their effectiveness.

© ZOE KNIGHTON

Following in the footsteps of Domenico Scarlatti, the virtuoso Italian cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini moved to Spain as a young man. Spain’s cultural status in Europe had lowered due to the mix of cultures and the barbarous behaviour it was known for in other countries. In an effort to become more European in character, Spanish musicians were sent to study in other countries, and foreign composers like Boccherini, who arrived in Spain in the 1760s, were welcomed with open arms. Employed at first by Don Luis, King Charles’ younger brother, Boccherini undoubtedly thought himself somewhat superior to the Spaniards and felt the need to ‘tame’ the savage Spanish musicians.

Boccherini wrote some 250 quintets, most for violin, viola and two cellos, with one cello often having a concerto-like part reaching into the high registers. He also loved the guitar, however, and even wrote concertante guitar parts into some of his symphonic works. He is best known to guitarists today for his numerous guitar quintets; of these, No. 4 in D Major, often called ‘Fandango’ after its final movement, is undoubtedly the most loved. Indeed, it is today perhaps one of the most frequently played pieces of chamber music written with an original guitar part.

Finished in 1798, the work borrows all its movements from two of the composer’s previous quintets. For these performances, we present just the two final movements: a slow introduction followed by the spirited Fandango which draws freely on the rich guitar culture of Spain and leaves behind the more ‘serious’ style of Boccherini’s own cultural heritage.

© KARIN SCHAUPP

Adelaide only: Many of the fundamental ideas of John Cage’s later compositional practices emerged in his earlier years. He entered Pomona College as a theology major in 1928, and describes in his autobiographical statement why he left soon after:

‘I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.’

Decades later, Cage would become a pioneer of indeterminacy in composition and in performance, where elements of the music are left up to chance or to the whim of the players. In 1951, Cage acquired the first English translation of the I Ching (Book of Changes), the Chinese symbol system designed for divination. Much of his subsequent work used operations based on pages from the I Ching to which Cage would randomly flip, including Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) for 12 radio receivers, Music of Changes (1951) for piano, and, later, Cheap Imitation. He also composed using star charts in his Etudes Australes (1975) for piano and Atlas Eclipticalis (1962) for orchestra. Cage’s most ambitious work involving chance procedures was Europeras I & 2 (1987), which uses the I Ching to generate every aspect of the production – libretto, score, costumes, sets, lighting, ‘plot’ – based on a database of over 100 classic European operas. According to Cage, his use of the technique allowed a piece to be performed in chaotically different ways, and also fulfilled his intention to ‘let things be themselves.’

Dream was originally used as music for the eponymous choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham, following the rhythmic structure of the dance and using a fixed gamut of tones.

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