Love Song

for Eleanor and Freya

The warmth of your fidgety body
Nestled against my spine

The softness of your fairy kisses
On my cheek

The sweet nutty smell of your hair

The shape and smallness of your hands in mine

These things I carry with me

Like the strange collection of shells and stones
Leaves and cicada skins
That find their way to the bottom of my bag

Unseen
Ready to surface and take me by surprise

Like the great waves of my love for you

The Fastness of Forgetting

I'm gradually fleshing out my new website and I've just added a video clip from a video performance piece I made in 2004. It's called The Fastness of Forgetting - inspired by a passage in Milan Kundera's novel Slowness:

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting… the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

This final section of the work is a very personal exploration of memory and how it fades. The images are largely photos of my family; my mother, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents and great aunts, most of whom are now gone. I remember playing this section to my mother and it made her cry. Now she's gone too and it makes me cry.

The music is played beautifully by Brisbane-based Topology ensemble.

Still Here

Like most parents of young children, there was something of a build up to 2013 - the year when we would have both children AT SCHOOL.  This was of particular interest to me, having been driven almost totally around the bend by the year of KINDER + SCHOOL = NO TIME to do anything.  So of course, I had great expectations - the year I would get my life back, the year I would get some decent work done, the year I would find balance and find myself and pick up where I left off.
I think I realised once school started (as warned by those that have gone before me) that the sea of time available for work was in fact somewhat limited, more like a medium sized lake.  Yes, I have more time to write - which is excellent. So far I have finished two substantial compositions which have been happily sent off to their commissioners.  I am already way ahead of where I was this time last year. I have two more pieces in the 'starting to work on' pile and I am hoping to delve into my work book of 'pieces I want to make' and actually make some of them.  I have set up a website - something I have been meaning to do for AGES.  And I've done some teaching, joined the school council, started doing yoga again, almost cracked couch-to-5K, built a new garden bed or two and even planted some veggies.  Not bad going. But back to the composing...
In the lead up to this year I made a commitment to myself that this year I would resist the temptation to accept every bit of paid work on offer and give myself permission to refocus on writing music.  Part of me felt guilty about this - would I be pulling my weight, was it an indulgence, or at worst, a kind of laziness?  Of course I know of this is just the crazy ravings of my 'inner critic' - I KNOW that writing music is what I do and is a worthwhile pursuit and something to be nurtured and protected.  But, it is actually quite confronting to let go of some of those security blankets (like a reasonable income) and step out into that sea (or lake) of creative possibility and re-discovery of self.  I wonder if I will keep my nerve?  Will I be able to keep focussed on what I need to do and not be distracted by what I think other people think I should be doing?  I'm going to give it a red hot go.

And my website, surprisingly, is christinemccombe.com.  Have a look.

Thank you Miriam

I sat at the piano today and played - something of a rare event over the last 10 years.  Our neighbour Graeme had given me a pile of his old music before he died last year and I have been saving it for such a day.  Among this dusty pile were quite a few pieces by dearly loved Australian composer Miriam Hyde.  It was the 100th anniversary of her birth last month and I had read a lovely blog post about her by music writer Rosalind Appleby so Miriam had recently been in my thoughts.  In the dusty pile of music I found a lovely little work called "Lullaby for Christine" with the dedication 'To my Baby Daughter'.  As I played through the piece I couldn't help but reflect on the struggle it would have been for Miriam Hyde to compose anything at all when caring for a baby.  I know I certainly struggled to compose anything very much for the first couple of years of our daughter's lives.  What a focussed, determined, tenacious and hugely talented woman she was.  Generations of Australian pianists (including me) grew up playing her pieces and I just took them for granted, not being aware of the circumstances in which they were written.  My two babies are now at school (Hoorah) and I can see my creative world opening up again - which is tremendously exciting.  All the more reason to appreciate and be inspired by the compositional efforts of all the composing mothers out there, past, present and future.  

the things we keep

Today I went through some of my mothers papers that had been sitting in bags and boxes in our bedroom for well over a year.  My mother died nearly 18 months ago and I have been putting off this task, knowing that it would be difficult.  But today I went through the various bundles of photos, old and more recent, my mother’s nursing certificates and letters of reference, a collection of cheque book stubs with balances brought forward and all cheques accounted for. My mother was a very organised and orderly person.  There were the mother’s day cards I had made, the letters my father had written to her when she was on trips home to the UK.  And the letters from my Grandfather to her, all signed ‘love from Daddy’.  There was an old chocolate box full of cards to my parents congratulating them on my birth – quite an event as my mother was 40 when I was born and I was her only child.  I remember going through this box of cards on may occasions when I was a child, enjoying all the pictures of bears and baby girls and pink ribbons.  Many of these things made me cry, as I expected they would.  My mother is so present in all of these things – it makes her absence now all the more painful to me. 

There were also many things that weren’t there that made me wonder why.  There were no letters from her mother, who died suddenly within a year or so of Mum moving to Australia.  I know they were very close so it seems strange that there are no letters from her, or indeed any letters before about 1977.  Although I haven’t been through all the boxes of Mum’s things yet, I don’t remember seeing any letters from her sisters in the UK, with whom she corresponded on a reasonably regular basis.  I have a feeling that my mother disposed of much of her correspondence.  I can imagine her having one of her ‘clean outs’ which could often be quite ruthless and unsentimental.  My mother was the opposite of a hoarder – she regularly shed things.  And seemingly letters were amongst the things that she did not deem worth keeping.  I’m not sure that they contained terrible family secrets that she didn’t want me to find out – I think she just felt no compulsion to hold onto the past.   I have found my mother’s lack of sentimentality in some instances quite disconcerting.  All through my childhood and into my adult life my mother held onto a neatly folded tissue containing my baby teeth.  I can remember where she kept it in her dressing table – it was always there.  After she died and I had to pack up her things, there was no sign of the baby teeth.  I can’t imagine why she would have disposed of them after all this time.  She never asked me if I wanted them.   Another example was an old reel – to reel tape recorder with a recording of me, aged 3, talking about a ‘koala bear’ eating porridge.  A few years ago I got the recording digitised as we were worried the tape might deteriorate.  I returned the tape to my mother and then some time after that she disposed of the tape machine and the tape reels.

So it was all the more strange going through her papers to come across a small envelope containing an RSVP to her 9^th birthday party from a little girl called Winnie.  I’d never seen this note before, I have no idea who Winnie was, or why this small envelope and its contents has survived for nearly 80 years when so many other seemingly significant things have gone by the wayside.  Perhaps it had survived in my Grandfather’s papers (he definitely WAS a hoarder) and my mother came across it when she was going through his things after his death.  I will ask my aunty if she remembers a little girl called Winnie but as she would have only been 7 years old at the time, she may not . 

And going through my mothers things leads me to reflect on how I deal with the dilemma of what to keep and what to shed as I move through life, accumulating things.  We have boxes full of children’s art works and school books and little things they have made – and our girls are still young.  There are years ahead of accumulating and shedding of things not regarded as important enough to keep.

I still have a collection of my own school books and art – a collection that has been pruned over the years but much of it survives.  I wonder how I will deal with the hard choices of what to keep and what to discard and what I will leave for our children.  

Sketching Impressions on 3MBS

I recently took part in a 3MBS Radio panel discussion about teaching Music Composition, chaired by Thomas Reiner.  The other panelists were Dindy Vaughan, Marc Hannaford and Russell Goodwin.Here are some of my thoughts on the questions Thomas gave us as a starting point for the discussion. 
(The show will air on 3MBS digital on Tuesday 20 November at 7pm AEST) 

Tertiary Music Composition Interview Questions 

What are the main challenges?
For me as a teacher – The students’ varying levels of technical skill; different expectations; different styles and idioms.  Generally, the need to foster high standards of creative curiosity and engagement; to encourage students to find their own voice as composers and to challenge them to move outside of their comfort zone. 

What purpose or relevance?
Art is always relevant and always has a purpose – this is how our culture develops and evolves and reflects who we are. In terms of the relevance within a University setting; Composition is a high level intellectual discipline, integrating a range of technical and theoretical skills.  Teaching composition at a tertiary level is ONE way of emphasizing the importance of intellectual rigour in the discipline. 

 How important are philosophy and critical theory?
It’s all about context – essential that young composers have an understanding of WHY they are doing what the do and HOW it relates to the broader context of our culture and society.  Art is never created in a vacuum and students need to reflect on where their work is coming from, what informs it, what they are aiming to reflect on and achieve in their work. 

 How important are specific skills and what are they?
If students are working in notated music: the hardest thing is to capture a sonic idea and express it in notated form – so an understanding and technical proficiency with notation and how to capture and express all the subtleties and shapes of sound. In electronic music: proficiency with software so that it is a TOOL not a master – so that the technology allows them to articulate their ideas rather than the technology determining how those ideas are shaped.In either domain: an understanding of how music works in TIME and SPACE: Dramatic pacing, shape and structure, how to unfold and develop a musical idea through TIME.  And also the ability to analyze one’s own work as well as the work of others – to find out how it (the music) works.

Exercises in technique or project-based learning?
A bit of both but this should definitely be driven by the student’s own interests and creative approach. Technical exercises work best when they clearly relate to the student’s creative goals, when they have a clear relevance to a particular creative work.  

Reflective practice: the ability to think and write about your compositional work.
It is very important to be able to interrogate your own work – question your motivation, intention and method.  Again, all about context and being aware of where your work sits in the scheme of things, what it is attempting to say, reflect on.  Why you are doing it. I also think it is really important for artists in all disciplines to be articulate about their own work.  Contemporary Music doesn’t have to be a mystery – we should all be able to discuss our work and explain something of our approach and creative intentions to a wider, non-specialist, audience. 

When does music composition become a form of research?
Practice lead and practice based research is a valid approach – there is increasing interest in cross-disciplinary research at University where Art and Theory can be explored simultaneously. Art can be a reflexive process where the making and the writing about the making inform each other.There is plenty of scope for music composition to be understood as research.  My PhD was entirely by portfolio – the music composition WAS the research.  But I also think some form of analysis and critique of one’s own work can enhance the ‘research’ outcomes. 

Art music vs industry-based composition.
I don’t like the word INDUSTRY.  I think education is about learning the skills and developing the students’ ability to articulate their ideas.  Once they have those skills, they can use them however the want to.  I feel very uncomfortable when people start talking about music as a product or something with a commercial value – that is not what I teach and it is not what I value, personally, in music.  If I can help students to develop their skills and technical proficiency, then they can write music for whatever context interest them.  Writing music for ipad apps or computer games or film or tv or theatre – these are specific skills but you have to have the basics first.  But an understanding of how music functions in time and space is relevant to all these ‘uses’ of music, as well as the more purely ‘art music’ approach.

 Do we still express human emotion and experience?
I like the philosopher Susanne Langer’s description – Music as Symbolic Form.   Through its structure and use of material music can function as a SYMBOL for all kinds of experiences and emotions.  And reflecting on and evoking human experience and emotion is still a really central part of why many of us choose to create, to make ART.  But there are obviously many other motivating factors – music can be just as engaging and aesthetically appealing when it focuses on purely formal and structural concepts.  Fractals, proportions, processes – all can still result in music that is satisfying and enriching to listen to.But then, that has always been the case – a Bach Fugue is just as beautiful to me as a Mahler song.  

What are the key issues for the future?
Don’t lose sight of the musical past and encourage an understanding of how music has got to where it is and WHY is still really important.  

No Alarms and No Surprises

I first listened to Radiohead’s OK Computer in my friend Alyson’s flat in Anniesland, Glasgow, in 1997, not long after I had moved there from Melbourne.  It was evening, we’d had a few drinks and were listening to this strange music in a darkened room.  The impact of that first listening stayed with me.  I can remember buying a copy of the CD somewhere in Sauchiehall Street soon after and listening to it over and over again alone in my crazy third floor tenement flat in Dennistoun.  I listened to it all through that Glasgow winter with the wind howling through the gaps in my bedroom window, with the calor gas heater valiantly trying to fend off the icy dampness that Scotland does so well.  My memories of this time in my life are still clearly etched; I was quite lonely, living in a not particularly lively part of town, not knowing many people, spending a lot of time by myself, in my own head, writing music, listening to Radiohead, eating oatcakes and drinking whisky.  It was a very intense time and sometimes my more maudlin tendencies would come to the fore, particularly under the influence Radiohead’s strange introspective soundworld.  My life was opening into a new and unknown phase in a different country, a long way from home.

Today I am listening to Radiohead while I cook dinner for my family; the cat is sitting on a kitchen chair keeping me company while our two children rampage around the house.  I’m looking out at a very green and slightly overgrown garden, tucked away in a quiet street in Melbourne’s Northern suburbs.  I am far from lonely or alone -  I am in a place that feels very much like home.  There is no time for the self-indulgent introspection of the younger me and the maudlin me of the late 90s has been superseded by a reasonably happy and well adjusted version.  So it is all the more disconcerting to listen to this music that powerfully transports me back to another time and place, when I was in many ways a different person.  The music evokes the sense of a particular time and place more powerfully than mere recollection.  If I close my eyes I could almost be back there, nearly 15 years ago, with the very particular smells and sounds and sensations that surrounded me then.  I’m not sure that any other art form or medium can evoke our personal pasts with such directness.  Another reminder of the power music has in our lives.