Listen & tracks

3 works · 48:19

Nuper Rosarum FloresGuillaume Dufay 2 movements25:32
1. 1 (1436) 6:50
2. 2 monody after Dufay for instrumental ensemble and early music consort 18:42
3 To Be Alone Barry Conyngham simultaneous solos for four performers and pre-recorded tape (1978) 11:04
4 Music for Brass Instruments III James Fulkerson for twelve brass players (1978) 11:43

The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence stands behind Nuper Rosarum Flores, Hames’s monody after Guillaume Dufay for instrumental ensemble and early music consort directed by Gerald English. Both the 1436 motet and the new work turn on musical space and proportional design.

Barry Conyngham’s To Be Alone sets four simultaneous solos against pre-recorded tape, an image of loneliness and the isolating modern world.

James Fulkerson closes the disc with Music for Brass Instruments III for twelve brass players.

In the artist’s words

On 25 March 1436, Pope Eugenius IV dedicated the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence with its great dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. During the ceremony the Papal choir performed the motet Nuper Rosarum Flores that Guillaume Dufay had composed for the event, apparently basing the numerical structure of his work upon the proportional module used by Brunelleschi in his architecture.

My own work takes the original Dufay as a starting point for a set of continuous thematic transformations compositionally articulated in time by means of a complex series of proportional sieves. The resulting melodic contours, each sharply characterized in terms of tempo, register, and timbre, unfold in an overlapping and multi-layered system which, with their isorhythmic and isomelic structure, may be regarded as a kind of “same musical space” that the four sections of my work share in common with the Dufay.

Nuper Rosarum Flores was commissioned by The Victorian College of the Arts to pay tribute to the distinguished work of Dr Phillip Law, AO, CBE, Vice President of the Victoria Institute of Colleges, on the occasion of his retirement. The first performance was given by the Victorian Time Machine, directed by the composer and in the presence of Dr Law, during a private ceremony in the Orchestra Studio of The Victorian College of the Arts in July 1977. The work is dedicated to David Munrow, In Memoriam.

— Richard David Hames

This piece represents a further development for me in the area of performer–composer interaction. The highly experienced and intuitive members of the Time Machine enabled me to replace a conventional notation with a partly verbal, partly notated score which was used as a beginning point for the composition. I was then able to work closely with each performer to fix the material of the piece.

The basic idea of the piece is to explore four simultaneous, separated, but ultimately co-existing and complementary solos, investigating loneliness. The everlasting chord and the “bell tones” were pre-recorded and played to the performers during the recording process. These also serve to suspend and distort our perceptions of time.

The “actors” humorously, intensely, explosively reveal themselves, somehow held in the bounds of the four pitches, until in the last section of the piece they coalesce into a cry for assistance.

This is certainly my most expressive piece and is intended to be a comment on the isolating nature of the modern world.

— Barry Conyngham

When I visited The Victorian College of the Arts in July 1977, I gave the first performance of my Music for Brass Instruments I, which I had composed in 1975 for brass quintet and pre-recorded tape. During these rehearsals and the various lectures which I delivered in that three-week period, I began to know many of the brass players at the College and when my thoughts turned to composing a piece for the Victorian Time Machine during my tenure as composer-in-residence at the College during 1978, it seemed quite natural to write a work for this group of people.

My works have often employed graphic scores and extended technical resources, especially for brass players, but Music for Brass Instruments III uses only conventional playing techniques and standard notation – in part because extended techniques mean that many players are unable to approach the scores and because many others are unable to form an image of what the piece sounds like. It has recently seemed important to me to confront these two problems.

I have not used any pre-planned compositional scheme for the work. I just sit down and compose.

— James Fulkerson

Artists

Victorian Time Machine

ensemble

Richard David Hames

director, conductor

Richard David Hames is an Australian composer, conductor and director. He directed the Victorian Time Machine, an instrumental and vocal ensemble that grew out of the Victorian College of the Arts.

Barry Conyngham

composer

Barry Conyngham, born in Sydney, has received numerous awards and fellowships for composition, among them Churchill, Harkness, Australia Council and Senior Fulbright grants. He holds an ARIA, two Sounds Australian Critics Awards and two Maggs Awards.

Guillaume Dufay

composer

James Fulkerson

composer

James Fulkerson composes chamber, stage, electroacoustic and multimedia works and plays trombone in experimental music. His Music for Brass Instruments III is concentrated brass writing; as a player he has drawn more than two hundred new pieces and leads ensembles at the edge of the notated score.