Exploring Australian Recorder Composition

Background

In 2020, I completed my Honours degree in Classical Composition at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music. My exegesis investigated the contemporary Australian classical recorder composition scene, catalogued 140 works for recorder by Australian composers written since 2010, surveyed composers and recorder players, presented a folio of three original works for recorders, and concluded that the collaborative relationships that have developed between composers and recorder players will facilitate the continued growth of the contemporary classical recorder scene in Australia. This article reflects on my research and shares some of my findings that may be of interest to the broader recorder community.

Part One

I first found my way into the world of recorder music when, at the age of 16, I joined my Mum’s small recorder group and learnt to play by muddling my way through Mozart, Bach, and Byrd. Six years later, equipped with better technique, a plethora of new recorder playing friends, and a Bachelor of Music majoring in Classical Composition, I realised that I didn’t know much at all about the compositional possibilities of the recorder, and the broader recorder music scene in Australia. Recorder had always been my hobby, separate from my practice as a composer, but as I began to experiment with the recorder’s creative potential, my interest grew, and coincided with my Honours year at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music. In that fateful year of 2020, my time at home was spent investigating what Australian composers and musicians have been creating with recorders.

Recorders have been firmly present in the Australian music scene for close to a century, and had become established as an instrument with contemporary composition potential by the end of the 20th Century thanks to the work of innovative player-composers including Ros Bandt, Zana Clarke, Ian Shanahan, Malcolm Tattersall, and Benjamin Thorn. As the 2010s were drawing to a close, I decided to focus my investigation, titled Contemporary Classical Recorder Music in the Australian Compositional Landscape, on recorder composition activities between 2010 and 2020 in the hope that this would paint a picture of the scene as it is now. I began my research on the Australian Music Centre (AMC) website, “the national service organisation dedicated to the promotion and support of art music in Australia”. The AMC's recorder music summary provides a brief overview of the scene and lists some representative compositions by Australian composers, mostly written in the 2000s. Searching further through the AMC library, I discovered 29 works for recorder listed since 2010, which was significantly fewer than listed in previous decades. The AMC can only list works if the represented composers themselves update them; however, seeing this diminishing number of recorder compositions spurred my determination to find out if this was an accurate depiction of the trajectory of new music for recorders in Australia.

As I continued my review of the literature, my findings quickly reinforced the need for my study beyond just my personal interest. I found articles, theses, and interviews relating to Australian recorder music, but most predated 2010. The Recorder: A Research and Information Guide, a bibliographic research guide by David Lasocki and Richard Griscom, published in 2012, only listed sources relating to Australian recorder music from before 2000, with the exception of a catalogue compiled by Nicholas Lander for his Recorder Homepage which he continued updating until 2012. Was this because interest in composing for the instrument has diminished, or perhaps more recent activities have simply yet to be documented? Upon searching Australian academic databases for more recent scholarly research, I found one research paper written since 2010, a Master’s thesis by Australian recorder player Joanne Arnott, Recorders and Electronics: An Introduction to the Performance of Electroacoustic Music. Arnott’s thesis concludes that “the continuing involvement of recorders and recorder players in the electroacoustic music scene will solidify the recorder’s place as a truly modern instrument in a modern context” (p.102). The ideas explored in this thesis provided the catalyst for my growing idea that recorder music is evolving away from traditional forms, and I turned to primary source material for answers. In her 2013 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address, recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey observed that “the reality of being a recorder player based in Australia is that there is no ready‐made job for me here as a performing musician. Nothing exists unless, together with others, we create it.” True to Lacey’s words, I began to find artist websites, album releases, concert programmes, and fascinating collaborations, and discovered a prolific group of Australian recorder players and composers actively creating music for recorders, many in quite exploratory forms. Thus, my hypothesis was formed: There has been a sustained interest in the creation of contemporary classical recorder music in Australia over the last decade, but it has not been fully documented. So, I set out to do just that.

To guide my research, I developed three research questions:

1. What are the driving factors behind the creation of contemporary classical recorder music in Australia?

2. Who is programming/performing this music?

3. Are there any social and/or practical limitations in the process of creating recorder music that need to be overcome?

I addressed the first two research questions through a deep-dive into the music being created. Using the AMC library, Orpheus Music’s catalogue of Australian music (kindly provided to me in spreadsheet form by Peter Biffin), and web-based primary source material, I catalogued all of the works I could find that were composed by an Australian composer, composed between 2010 and 2020, and fitted into the contemporary classical genre, excluding pedagogical music. To fit the scope of my study, the works must have been either publicly performed, published, or released as a professional recording. In total, I catalogued 140 works written by 61 Australian composers; a significant increase from the 29 works I found on the AMC library at the time of conducting my research.

My catalogue revealed some interesting trends: Orpheus Music was responsible for publishing 83 of the 140 works, representing nearly 60% of the catalogue thanks to their efforts over the years to facilitate and promote new Australian recorder music. 74% of the 61 composers had only written one work for recorder. The other 26% of composers who had written two or more works were either published by Orpheus Music, such as Benjamin Thorn and Lance Eccles; recorder player-composers, such as Ryan Williams and Natasha Anderson; or have collaborated with the same professional recorder player/s multiple times, such as Chris Williams and Mark Oliveiro who have both collaborated with Alicia Crossley. Many of the composers I catalogued were based in either Victoria or New South Wales (NSW), which was unsurprising as they are the two most populous states. NSW, however, is home to over half the composers I found, suggesting that highly active individuals and music entities can create a self-sustaining microcosm of creative opportunities. I could see this particularly reflected in the work of Alicia Crossley, who was involved in commissioning at least 17 new works by Australian composers, many based in NSW, between 2010 and 2020.

The instrumentation of the works I found also gave insight into the current trajectory of recorder composition. Predictably, the most popular instrumentation was recorder ensemble; however, the next most common combination used by composers was recorders and technology, which made up 17% of the works I found. Outside of the Orpheus Music Publications, which have a specific target audience of recorder ensembles, this percentage rises to 40%. This shows that, outside of composing for the standard combinations, composers are using recorders in unique ways to establish their place in the contemporary classical composition scene, and perhaps also to overcome some practical barriers that the recorder faces, which I will discuss later.

At the beginning of my investigation, I chose the terminology ‘contemporary classical’, often used interchangeably with ‘art music’, which broadly encompasses tonal, post-tonal, and experimental music, to classify works for inclusion in my catalogue. However, I found it difficult to classify the works I found, largely because many of the projects embarked on by composers and recorder players explore a significant breadth of styles. These styles included traditional tonal harmony, evident in the work of Lance Eccles; experimental graphic scores, such as Eve Klein’s Codextant (2015) for two recorders and electronic soundscape; the “instrumental, audio-visual and acousmatic works” of Natasha Anderson; and works such as Conversations with Ghosts (2013) by Paul Kelly, James Ledger, and Genevieve Lacey, that blur the lines between singer-songwriter and contemporary classical. Similarly, the diversity of styles being explored across the work of individual Australian composers is evident in Ryan William’s album of structured solo improvisations, Wanderings, which contrasts with his Renaissance/Jazz-inspired composition, Felt (2018) for Renaissance recorder quartet. The fluidity of styles I encountered shows that the recorder players are occupying an evolving and versatile space in new music. In addition to the many Orpheus Music Publications, it was exciting to see entire albums of commissioned works by Australian composers being produced, including Alicia Crossley’s Addicted to Bass (2011), for bass recorder, percussion and live electronics, featuring works by Mark Oliveiro, Andrew Batt-Rawden, Alex Pozniak, Chris Williams, Tristan Coelho, Elias Constantopedos and Hayden Woolf; and Duo Blockstix’s Works for Percussion and Recorder (2017) featuring works by Daniel Rojas, Paul Cutlan, Peter McNamara, Julian Day, Damian Barbeler, Mark Oliveiro, and Tim Hansen. These represent only a selection of the works I investigated, and already since completing my Honours degree I have been made aware of other individuals, such as Racheal Cogan, who are creating new and experimental music for recorders. Similarly, at the time of my research, Alicia Crossley was still working on her latest album, Bass Instincts (2021) for bass recorder, electronic soundscapes, and percussion, which has recently been released and features works by Australian composers Anne Boyd, Jessica Wells, Holly Harrison, Alice Chance, Lisa Cheney, Amanda Cole, and Fiona Hill.

As the catalogue developed, I began to discover that the driving factor behind the creation of new recorder music is collaboration. This is mainly fuelled by the recorder players themselves, who are also usually responsible for commissioning and programming the music, which aligns with the observations Genevieve Lacey made in her Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address. Indeed, a core group of Australian recorder players has been responsible for commissioning much of the last decade’s new music for recorders: Natasha Anderson, Joanne Arnott, Alana Blackburn (who, alongside Arnott, forms the Australian Recorder Project), Alicia Crossley (and Duo Blockstix), Genevieve Lacey, Ryan Williams (and the Horsley and Williams Duo) and the Recorder Co-op, consisting of Williams, Hannah Coleman, Ruth Wilkinson, and Alexandra Bailliet-Joly. Additionally, the work of Orpheus Music in championing Australian music through their publications and their annual Composition Competition has led to the creation of new repertoire that is enjoyed by recorder groups across the country.

Part Two

Early on in my research into Contemporary Classical Recorder Music in the Australian Compositional Landscape, it became clear that the voices of those involved in creating and commissioning new works for recorders would form an essential component of my investigation. Therefore, to complement the catalogue and address my third research question (are there any social and/or practical limitations in the process of creating recorder music that need to be overcome?) I invited composers who had composed for recorder since 2010, professional recorder players, and representatives from recorder societies to complete anonymous surveys (one for composers and one for recorder players). As the invitations were sent out in the early stages of my research, I was not able to invite all of the composers and recorder players that I would eventually uncover.

I received responses from 7 composers, 6 professional recorder players, and 5 representatives from recorder societies, and gained some interesting insights. The surveys revealed that 72% of respondents agreed that there has been a sustained interest in the creation of contemporary classical recorder music in Australia between 2010 and 2020. When asked if they thought that this has been fully documented by scholars, 44% answered no, and the remainder were unable to judge, which supports my hypothesis that there has been a sustained interest in the creation of contemporary classical recorder music in Australia over the last decade, but it has not been fully documented. Aligning with the findings from my catalogue, many of the composers had only written one or two recorder compositions, whereas the recorder players revealed that they had commissioned an average of 28 new works each since 2010. Recorder societies commissioned an average of one work per decade and are more active in performing new Australian music than in commissioning it. In total, the recorder-playing respondents reported a total of 172 commissions/collaborations in the last decade; 32 more than my cataloguing efforts had uncovered.

The surveys also included a series of short-answer questions to gain individual insights about recorder composition in Australia. Many respondents observed that potential barriers for composers wishing to write for recorder include its low dynamic range, and the lack of knowledge that composers have about how to write for them. However, respondents also pointed out that the pure tone of recorders and the extended techniques they are capable of also invite much creative potential. Similarly, using technology as well as understanding which instruments combine the best with recorders (such as percussion and stringed instruments) were noted as key strategies used to overcome the recorder’s dynamic limitations. Another potential barrier mentioned was that audiences are often unfamiliar with hearing contemporary sounds and techniques from recorders. While showing great enthusiasm and advocacy for contemporary Australian work, many recorder players and societies acknowledged that they carefully consider their audiences when commissioning and performing new music, and often programme it alongside more traditional repertoire to ensure audience engagement.

Some final insights that I wish to share from the surveys emerged from respondent’s reflections on the recorder’s role in the Australian music scene. Several respondents noted that, in Australia, the recorder is relatively free from its Renaissance past. They believe this gives more freedom for composers to be experimental and push the recorder outside of its traditional roles, which also distances it from Australia’s colonial past. Similarly, recorders are not confined to a single genre. Many respondents rightly questioned my decision to limit the scope of my study just to the ‘contemporary classical’ genre, referring to the growing body of work for recorders in Jazz, championed by players such as Rodney Waterman, folk, and popular music, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations with other artforms, which is an area where Genevieve Lacey is highly active.

The insights gained from the surveys, as well as the large number of commissions reported by the recorder player respondents, shows that there is still much scope for future research into Australian recorder music. For example, the catalogue could be expanded, and/or recorder music from a broader range of genres could be explored. Additionally, sociological factors could be further investigated: We all know the societal challenges we face as recorder players, and it would be fascinating to explore how our audiences influence the way that we compose, programme, and commission works for our instrument.

Undertaking this research filled me with optimism that the recorder is making new ground in contemporary composition thanks to the passionate advocacy of Australia’s talented recorder players. It inspired my folio of three new compositions for recorders: Flow for alto/tenor recorder and guitar, Kelp Forest for alto, tenor, bass and great bass recorders, and Occlusion of the Sun for bass recorder/voice, mezzo-soprano, vibraphone and MaxMSP. Written at the height of the pandemic, they are yet to be premiered. I wish to take this opportunity to encourage all of you, as composers, recorder players, and recorder societies, to promote and advocate for the work you are doing; to research Australian recorder music; to commission new music, and to support the wonderful work of our fellow recorder enthusiasts. If composers and recorder players continue to work together, learn from each other, and cultivate their audiences, contemporary classical recorder composition can continue to grow and develop within the Australian compositional landscape.

Bio

Claire Farrell is a composer and recorder player from lutruwita/Tasmania. Her musical style is informed by her fascination with nature and is characterised by polyphonic melodic lines, driving rhythms and musical imagery.

Farrell studied composition at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music with Dr Maria Grenfell and Dr Scott McIntyre. She graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and was awarded a University Medal. Her composition portfolio includes commissions from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO), Flinders Quartet, RANT Arts, Launceston College, the Hobart Society of Recorder Players, and children’s author Sharon J. Yaxley. Farrell has also gained extensive composition experience through her participation in development programs such as the TSO Composers’ Project, the Flinders Quartet Composer Development Program, and the Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp Composition Program.

In 2020, the TSO commissioned Farrell to write three short works, In the Garden, Arthur and Gwen, and Solving the Mystery, for beginner recorder and small ensemble to be included in the TSO’s educational resource, Recorder Lift Off!. She also performed the descant recorder parts for the recordings of all the works commissioned for the resource.