Making the Stars

The fifteenth Canberra International Music Festival is in full swing. The first concert in the National Portrait Gallery foyer was a tribute to Peter Sculthorpe on his 80th birthday. His How the Stars were Made opened the programme. William Barton’s didjeridu was the base for an evocation in percussion of the Aboriginal story about the creation of the heavens. For the space of the piece we were out in the desert watching the stars spearing into the sky. Bells, cymbals, drums, half-formed melodies, sticks, triangles and gongs cascaded over each other, then the didjeridu remained, a haunting ongoing reminder of the past in the present.
I sat with William Barton’s mother, Delmae, before the concert. She told me that she had recently sung a song of lament and hope for reconciliation at St Mary’s church in Brisbane as the congregation left the church for a new home at a Trades Hall. The community appears to be one of inclusiveness, welcoming people from all walks of life without judgement. Pity the Roman Catholic Church, who proclaim themselves to be the living body of the man who came to earth to reconcile all with God, can’t at least tolerate and at most enfold them all in its bosom. (Perhaps the lack of bosom in the hierarchy is the problem?)
The concert continued with the Tinalley Quartet. With their hands and bows they infused the music with their own vitality and passion. At their own concert last night we swooned to their Schubert Quartettsatz and Ravel quartet.
I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of Sculthorpe’s songs. Mina Kanaridis’ pure, strong but not resonant soprano, certainly enhanced my appreciation of them.
Sculthorpe, who sat immediately in front of me during the concert, says that after his first music lesson at age 7 or so, he rushed straight home and started writing music. His teacher scolded him for misinterpreting the reason for piano lessons and he composed by torchlight under the blankets for a year or so afterward. I thought this a charming story until I remembered that the reason I nagged my mother for piano lessons was that I wanted to learn how to make music in the fullest sense. I spent many hours as a child experimenting with sound on the old honky tonk piano stored on the back verandah. The only composition I remember was a cascade of notes I called The Bells. When did the dream of creation degenerate into the dirge of scales and fingerings?