Full Music Credits

Music by Peter Sculthorpe (cast) The People and Musicians at Gapuwiyak Community Music Teacher Colleen Lenord Wire Music Alan Lamb Composed & Recorded on the Faraway Wind Organ Fitzgerald, Western Australia Chamber Music David Matthews Conductor William Motzing Music Recording Supervisor Ron Purvis Music Recording Engineer Mike Stavrou Music Recorded at Studios 301 Sydney Performed by Sydney Studio Musicians Together with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Phoenix String Quartet 'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls' The Bohemian Girl Act 11 Music by Michael Balfe Sung by Vanessa Fallon Piano played by Leon Gibbons 'O Mistress Mine' Music by Peter Sculthorpe Lyrics by William Shakespeare Sung by Nicholas Rontley Margo Adelson Clare Maclean Kathy Marsh 'John Peel' 'Cheer Boys Cheer' 'The British Grenadiers' Played by the Burwood Brass Band (NSW) Under the direction of Bryan Seddon 'King of the Fairies" Arranged and Played by Doug Kelly Bill O'Toole Andrew de Teliga Winsome Evans 'Dark Island' 'No Awa to Bide Awa' 'Green hills of Tyrol' Bagpipes Played by Graham Hardy Thanks to Australian Music Centre Peter Sculthorpe was one of Australia's foremost composers of classical music until his death in August 2014. Tasmanian born, his first score for a feature film was the low-budget 1962 children's feature They Found A Cave, which was filmed in that state. He next did the score for Michael Powell's Age of Consent, but there were disagreements about the score he devised, with it being dropped and replaced by a conventional outing from British composer Stanley Myers. (It is now available on the restored region 1 DVD 'director's cut' edition. It is a muted piece which Sculthorpe acknowledges was written under the influence of Balinese music, with Dunk island a kind of Bali substitute for him). According to Sculthorpe, he was busy writing the Sun music ballet score in 1967-68, working with Robert Helpmann, but he always loved the notion of movies - he'd been aware of Powell since Red Shoes - and found working with Powell incredibly easy. Disgruntled Columbia executives aside, whom Sculthorpe said found the score "too sophisticated", Sculthorpe would go on to become an elder statesman of the Australian classical music scene, and his work for the movie is a gentle, beguiling and engaging work using instruments that clearly unnerved parochial American executives. According to Manganinnie's executive producer Gil Brealey, the experience had so soured Sculthorpe that he had resolve not to write another film score. It was David Williams, then head of Greater Union distributors, who persuaded Sculthorpe to do the score for Manganinnie. Burke & Wills was Sculthorpe's next, and last major score for a feature film. He had a troubled relationship with the demands, and compromises involved in scoring for film. The result is surprisingly conventional, though it proves that Sculthorpe could write traditional heroically flavoured music, while also dabbling with electronic moments associated with the landscape and the Aboriginal presence - though the wire music is by Alan Lamb. Sculthorpe has his own site here, and there is a wiki here, and he is also present at the Australian Music Centre site here (The AMC is thanked in the film's credits). (Below: Peter Sculthorpe) (Below: Peter Sculthorpe meeting up with Michael Powell's son Kevin Powell to reminisce about Age of Consent in the extras on the special edition DVD, and below that, Sculthorpe being interviewed) In the usual way for the times, a CD was released of the film's score to coincide with the film's release in 1987 in the United States: CD American Gramaphone (USA) AGCD900 1987 Composed by Peter Sculthorpe Produced by Chip Davis & Graeme Clifford Engineered by Mike Stavrou Balanced by Peter Sculthorpe & Mike Stavrou Recorded in Australia Mastered by Clete Baker, Sound Recorders, Omaha, Nebraska Musicians: Sydney Studio Musicians, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and the Phoenix String Quartet Aboriginal music played by the Gapuwiyak Community Harp solo: Louise Johnson King Of The Faeries (A group of folk musicians lead by Doug Kelly) Sand Dunes Willsʼ Variations: The Croquet Waltz The Grail The Cricket Quadrille Willsʼ Death The Dream Dream Sequence Premonition Wire Music Dreamtime (Aboriginal) I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls (From Act II, Michael Balfeʼs opera “The Bohemian Girl”). Soprano: Vanessa Fallon Dawn Travelling Burke And Wills March The Search Julia The Gulf The Coolibah Tree Stars Burkeʼs Death Julie Reprise Alan Lamb, who did the wire music, has only a notional wiki here, but there is a much more lengthy exposition of his work, at time of writing, here, which includes this explanation of how his wire music came about: One night in the summer of 1975, during a holiday on the island of Mull in North West Scotland, he (Lamb) pulled to the side of the road in his van, intending to sleep. Later, he was awoken by the sound of another major sixth, but this time it was not a dream. He had stopped beside telephone wires which sang throughout the night, the sound waxing and waning with the wind. There were fascinating structures of ever-changing rhythm and harmony, giving rise to melodies which unfolded until dawn. Hearing the wires sing Lamb felt emotionally transported and became determined to record and play their music. Later, in 1985, Lamb returned to Australia to take up a Senior Research Fellowship and to pursue postgraduate research into neural circuitry at the University of WA. He settled in Fremantle, where he now lives. Although his medical and scientific career progressed, he felt deeply frustrated in his attempts, before leaving Scotland, to record the wire music. Low winds and problems with microphones and machines meant the cassettes he brought to Australia only contained a few ghostly hums buried in noise. Worse still, he discovered the wires in the country around Perth did not sing because they were sheathed to prevent metal fatigue, which was caused by the same vibrations that produced the music. A breakthrough occurred in 1976 when Lamb visited his sister and her husband at `Faraway', their farm near the Fitzgerald National Park in the Great Southern Region of WA. In the vast landscapes of the area, one becomes very aware of plains, sky, wind and seemingly limitless space. Running along the farm boundary, Lamb found a half-mile stretch of abandoned telephone wires: 12 poles and six wires, all intact and unsheathed... and all singing softly in the wind. They ran north-south, the best possible orientation for the prevailing east wind. Lamb was able to buy them for $10; and thus began Lamb's Faraway Wind Organ project. More than 10 years later, in 1986, the farm is vacant, the poles are falling over and the wires have succumbed to lightning and rust. But in the intervening years Lamb - while working towards his aesthetic ideals - has learned to record the singing wires and compose music with them, in accord with the natural forces which produced the music. Typically, prior to composing, Lamb will spend a few days or up to several weeks recording, sometimes amassing up to 40 hours of tape or even recording almost continuously for more than 24 hours. At these times, he becomes aware of correspondences between the sounds and cyclic changes brought on by day and night, the weather and the seasons. From his pool of raw material he chooses sounds for compositions. This involves a prior stage of cataloguing and memorising. Sounds are classified according to pitch, rhythm, timbre, predominant key structure and emotional color. Details of accidental sounds such as percussive impacts, squeaks and so on are noted. Lamb gradually memorises their general structure, then reflects upon and mentally re-arranges sections until compositional ideas begin to emerge. In general, these tend to disclose certain temporal and harmonic orders suggested by the recordings. Finally, the ideas are realised using multi-channel tape, then modified until an optimum form crystallises. The entire process may take a few months or more than a year to reach completion. Even so, Lamb often revises or discards compositions. He is sure other compositional approaches are possible, and believes he has only exhausted a fraction of the possibilities. Wire music, he believes, has an infinite range - at least equal to that of the piano. (Below: Alan Lamb) The chamber music by David Matthews reflects another Sculthorpe collaboration - they were both represented on the score for Manganinnie. Matthews has a wiki here, and his own website here. Balfe's The Bohemian Girl is too well known to detail at length here. It has a wiki here. While this site hasn't been able to confirm it, it is likely that singer Vanessa Fallon was the same Fallon who also worked on early Wiggles shows and shows such as ABC for Kids. She graduated with a BMus (Voice) from the NSW Conservatorium and did a post graduate diploma. The Shakespeare set to music by Peter Sculthorpe comes from the Fool singing in Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III, in two slightly separated verses in the play: O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear! your true-loveʼs coming That can sing both high and low; Trip no further, pretty sweeting, Journeys end in loversʼ meeting— Every wise manʼs son doth know. What is love? ʼTis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; Whatʼs to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty,— Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty, Youthʼs a stuff will not endure. Doug Kelly, who contributed a folk music track to the film, with a group of folk musicians, has been around the around the Australian folk music scene for years and has appeared in a variety of bands, from Tansey's Fancy to Sirocco, and more recently with NSW folk singer Mandy Breeze doing a back to the roots duo album Simple Folk.

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