David Lumsdaine

1994: Kali Dances (flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, vibraphone, piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass

1992: A Garden of Earthly Delights (cello, orchestra)

1992: A Norfolk Song Book (soprano recorders/flutes)

1991: The Crane (flute, percussion, harp, synthesizer)

1990: Sine nomine (alto saxophone/bass clarinet, percussion

1990: 2 Just So Stories (The Elephant's Child, The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo) (narrator, dancer, live electronics)

1990: A Tree Telling of Orpheus (soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello)

1989: Round Dance (sitar, tabla, flute, cello, keyboard)

1988: A Dance and a Hymn for Alexander Maconochie (flute, clarinet, percussion, mandolin, guitar, violin, double bass)

1986: Empty Sky – Mootwingee (flute, trombone/horn, cello, 2 percussionists, 2 pianos)

1985: Bagatelles (flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola, cello)

1978: Mandala III (solo piano, flute, clarinet, viola, cello, bell)

The orchestral works 'Salvation Creek with Eagle' and 'Hagoromo' (1974 and 1977 respectively) continue and develop Lumsdaine's personal take on Australian nature. They are not in any sense programmatic works, but as Lumsdaine has pointed out in a 1983 BBC interview, 'the textures contain smells - one's senses run one into the other'. In musical terms, his by now colourful and versatile harmonic style enables him to control orchestral resources with expertise, as areas of vast harmonic resonance and density are contrasted with passages of limpid simplicity. In 'Salvation Creek', the sense of spaciousness is achieved with recourse to increasingly consonant subsets of the serial matrix, which serve as areas of relaxation in contrast to the occasional violent outbursts. 'Hagoromo', composed for Pierre Boulez and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is in many ways the summation of Lumsdaine's orchestral output: a complex, 3-movement structure replete with internal cross-references, yet for all that clearly put across to the uninitiated listener. The fast-slow-fast plan is framed by a carefully varied refrain of resonant chords in the brass (accompanied by bass drums). Although the work takes its title from a Japanese Noh Play, it is in effect a celebration of the beauties of nature generally - 'an idealised everywhere', as the critic Paul Griffiths admiringly put it. Whether in the long melodic arches of the slow central section, or the joyous dancing of the last part, the orchestral sonorities are acutely judged, and instantly recognisable as Lumsdaine. Again the harmonic style is clearly focussed with contrasting sections focussing on various modal sub-groups, yet the overall impression is of effortless richness and luminosity. At both its Paris premiere, and its eventual London premiere in 1983, the work generated enormous acclaim from both audiences and critics.

Lumsdaine's output also includes two other fine substantial piano works - notably the Bach-inspired 'Ruhe Sanfte, Sanfte Ruh' (1974) - and a considerable number of works involving electronics. His extraordinary tape montage/re-composition of events from the Durham Miners Gala 'Big Meeting' is perhaps the finest of these. There are many substantial chamber works, including the series of works entitled 'Mandala', a cello concerto, several song cycles and an orchestral fifth 'Mandala' (1989), another colourful homage to his favourite Australian landscapes and soundscapes. Shortly after composing his dense and energetic 'Kali Dances' for ensemble in 1996, Lumsdaine retired from composition, so that an overview of his oeuvre is already possible, unusually for a living composer.

1974: Salvation Creek with Eagle (chamber orchestra)

Lumsdaine's subsequent output joins this concern for human issues to a lasting passion for and fascination with the natural world. Lumsdaine is an esteemed ornithologist, whose field recordings of Australian birdsong are internationally admired as valuable aural documents of the Australian soundscape. 'Aria for Edward John Eyre' (1972) bring these twin concerns together in a beautifully paced dramatic setting of extracts from Eyre's journal covering his near-fatal crossing of the Australian Bight. Set for two narrators, soprano solo, doublebass solo, ensemble and live electronics, it offers a sophisticated fusion of the diverse sound sources into what is in effect a 50-minute dramatic cantata of great power. It is also one of the first works in Lumsdaine's output specifically and vividly evoking Australian natural landscapes, though at that time the composer had not seen them for nearly twenty years.

1969: Mandala II (flute, clarinet, percussion, viola, cello)

Lumsdaine was much affected by the later works of Anton Webern, though his music sounds very different from the many other composers of the fifties and sixties who were interested in this composer. Webern's use of symmetrical harmonic fields to focus and control the vertical functioning of his polyphony was a crucial stimulus. Lumsdaine's own harmonic language has elements of symmetry and intervallic limitation, and though usually derived from 12-pitch sets, is rarely strictly chromatic. In his masterly piano work 'Kelly Ground' (1966) the harmonic ground is a characteristic chordal area which, although dissonant overall, contains numerous quasi-diatonic subsets, with the interval of perfect fourth especially prominent. The overall progression of the work is towards the elimination of all extraneous pitch elements until only the ground itself remains.

1966, rev. 71: Easter Fresco (soprano, flute, horn, harp, piano)

Lumsdaine has disowned all works he composed before Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). His first acknowledged works were composed using a variety of pitch and rhythm techniques associated with serialism - techniques such as pitch rotation or permutation, and isorhythmic structures linking pitch and duration together. Central to all of Lumsdaine's work is the notion of 'ground', a term borrowed from Baroque musical terminology (specifically Purcell). Lumsdaine's grounds are rarely literal repeated bass-lines, though superimposed rhythmic periodicities can be a feature. More commonly, the ground is a strict harmonic-temporal framework from which the music departs and to which it returns in many different ways through the work. Sometimes - as in 'Mandala V' - the ground is a slow-moving chord progression, a kind of background harmony whose progressions and changes underpin the structure of the work. One of Lumsdaine's main personal contributions to the evolution of serial technique is his development of the 'Gemini' matrix - a manner of slowly transferring from the pitch content of one hexachord to another.

1964: Annotations of Auschwitz (soprano, flute + bass flute, trumpet, horn, piano, violin, cello)

David Newton Lumsdaine (born 31 October 1931) is an Australian composer. He studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music (as it was then known). He moved to England in 1952 and for a while shared a flat with fellow expatriate, the poet Peter Porter, with whom he collaborated on several projects including the cantata Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). In London he studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley. In 1970 he took a lecturing position at Durham University. In 1981 he took a post as senior lecturer at King's College London. He is published by The University of York Music Press and Universal Edition.