string quartet

duration: 16 minutes

Faber Music publishing details

Audio Excerpt

(one minute from the opening of the piece)

Programme Notes

Industrial Night Music was commissioned by Sandra Yates and Michael Skinner in memory of Michael’s father. One of the aspects of Michael’s father’s life was that he worked as an army engineer. This created a sense of resonance to me as I grew up in the Illawarra, a region dominated by the steelworks at Port Kembla, briefly working there and also in the blast furnace at the steelworks at Whyalla.

The outer sections of Industrial Night Music are built around musical expressions of mechanical and industrial processes viewed at close quarters. These include pollution, grime, dirt, ugliness, heat, a (male) worker surrounded by a surfeit of continually grinding interlocking gears, “mecchanico machismo”. The middle section is quite different: slow-moving, it portrays the still beauty of a large industrial workplace at night, viewed from afar, lit up by thousands of lights like a giant Christmas tree. It is only after one goes within the structures themselves that the true nature of the processes involved are revealed.

Industrial Night Music was first performed by the Goldner String Quartet in 2003, and toured by them for Musica Viva Australia.

notes by Matthew Hindson.

Reviews

At evening end and having its premiere season was Industrial Night Music, privately commissioned from Matthew Hindson, arguably today’s most distinctive Australian compositional voice, and in danger of being labelled as a bovver-boy.

He is much more, as this piece attests. Wisely rearranging the order of service to conserve some elbow grease for Hindson’s self-styled “meccanico machismo”, the players were able to expose the muscular, often memorable rhythmic patterns that clarify his texture and distinguish his pieces.

The cello was his instrument of choice to establish and maintain the momentum, and Julian Smiles lost quite a hunk of his bow hair depicting the dark and dirty sides of steelworks in Port Kembla and Whyalla. Elizabeth Silsbury, The Advertiser, 23 August 2003, page 87.

CD Recording Available?

Not yet. A live recording of the piece is available through the Australian Music Centre library.

Other Information

This piece may be ordered through Faber Music.

for string quartet with optional effects pedals and CD playback

or string quartet + didjeridu

duration: 25 minutes

Movements from this work may be performed separately or in different combinations: for example, the first, third and fifth movements would form a set called technologic 135.

Faber Music publishing details

Audio Excerpts (coming soon)

First movement:

Second movement:

Third movement:

Fourth movement:

Fifth movement:

Programme Notestechno logic

was written in 1997 as a commission from the Elektra String Quartet, and premiered by them in October of that year.

As the title suggests, a good deal of the music was written using techniques found in techno music, including repetition, parallel triadic harmony, block-line structures and predominantly fast tempos. The structure of the piece as a whole is reminiscent of Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 8. The outer movements contain slower yet intense material with the cello imitating the sound of the didjeridu. The 2nd and 4th movements most obviously use features of techno music as described above. The middle movement takes the form of a bizarre ballet mechanique, wherein the two violins and cello play unflinching regular single notes and motives above an ever-present viola figure.

notes by Matthew Hindson.

CD Recording Available?

Not yet. The Elektra String Quartet have recorded

technologic 135

for possible future release. A live recording of the piece performed by the Fyra Quartet and William Barton (didjeridu) is available through the

Australian Music Centre library

.

Other Information

The movements of this piece have formed the basis of other works such as

technologic 1-2

for string orchestra and

technologic 145

for large chamber ensemble.

The third movement of this piece,

technologic iii

, is published by Red House Editions in the string quartet volume

micros

.