• Monash University, Melbourne (Conference on British Music): Matyas Seiber's Late Music: Between British and Central European Cultures, Between Developing Variation and Constructivism, Sept 17-19, 2010
• Sheffield University, UK (Sixth Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology): Consonance and Dissonance in Music Theory and Music Psychology, July 23-24, 2010
• The Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester: Empiricism and Listening: Remarks on the Relationship between Measurement, Analysis and Interpretation, March 19, 2010
• Auckland University, New Zealand (Second International Symposium on Performance Science): Taking Microtonal Composition and Performance from the Periphery into the Mainstream, December 15-18, 2009
• The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK ("Listening, Audiences and Participation" Colloquium): Empiricism and Listening: Remarks on the Relationship between Measurement, Analysis and Interpretation, November 16-17, 2009
• The University of Newcastle, Australia (32nd Annual Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia): Keith Humble’s "Poèmes": A Choral Bridge between French Surrealist Literature and Modernism in Australian Music, September 26-29, 2009 (Presentation funded by the British Academy)
• The Australian National University (School of Music Research Conference): "Reconstructive" Postmodernism, September 12-13, 2009
• Pluscarden Abbey, Morayshire, Scotland (Conference on Sacred Music in Scotland): Thomas Wilson's Sacred Music and Sacred Songbook: A Project for the Twenty-first Century, September 3-5, 2009
• Sydney Australia (The Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference): An introduction to my "Twelve Transcendental Concert Studies on Themes from the Australian Poets", July 17-18, 2009
• Glasgow University ("The Anatomy of Listening" Colloquium): Listening Carefully to "Mondestrunken" and "Galgenlied", with Dr Jane Manning (Kingston University) and Ben Hillman (Glasgow University), June 13/14, 2009 (Presentation funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh)
• Royal College of Music, London (Grove Forum): Empirical Studies of Musical Performance: Measurement, Analysis & Interpretation, January 15, 2009
• University of Melbourne (31st Annual Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia): Keith Humble’s Modernism: From Homogenous Motivic-thematic Organicism to Heterogenous Gestural Constructivism, December 6, 2008
• Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra (Late Style: Conference):Schoenberg's "Kol Nidre", August 21/22, 2008
• Queen's University, Belfast (2008 International Computer Music Conference): The Rosegarden Codicil: Rehearsing Music in Nineteen-Tone Equal Temperament, August 27, 2008
• Aristotle University, Thessaloniki: Fourth Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, July 2008
• Glasgow University: Department of Adult and Continuing Education (DACE) Study Day, June 14, 2008
• Aberdeen University, Department of Music, February 1, 2008
• Stirling University, Department of Psychology (Scottish Perception Day): All in the Mind: Perceiving and Interpreting the Musical Structure of The Harmonious Blacksmith, December 2007
• Napier University, Edinburgh: Department of Music, November 7, 2007
• Boston College: Department of Music, October 2007
• Radford University, Virginia: Departments of Music, Psychology and Appalachian Studies (3 different colloquia), April 2007
• Stirling University, Department of Psychology (Scottish Perception Day): Thinking and Performing Microtonally: Rehearsal Strategies in 19ET using the Rosegarden Codicil, December 2006
• Queen Mary College, University of London: Digital Music Research Network Conference, December 2006
• Edinburgh University: Department of Music: Bringing the Marginal into the Mainstream: Overcoming the Problems of Thinking, Composing and Performing Microtonally, November 2006
• University of New England, Armidale, Australia: Musicological Society of Australia Conference, September 2006
• Royal College of Music, London: Rehearsing Microtonal Music, 18 May 2006
• Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama: Between Hardware and Protein: Pig in the Middle, 18 February 2006
• Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia, September 2005 and September 2006
• Boston University School of Music, 2004
• Monash University, Melbourne, Australia: Symposium of the International Musicological Society, July 2004 (Presentation funded by the British Academy)
• Australian National University School of Music, 2004
• Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand: Joint MSA and NZMS conference, November 2003 (Presentation funded by the British Academy)
• Birmingham University, Stratford Study Centre: British Music Study Day, May 2003
• Kingston University, London: School of Music Rhythmic Levels in Matyas Seiber: Tonal, Intervallic and Gestural Turnover, 12 February, 2003
• King's College, University of London: Music Department: Tonality and Atonality in Matyas Seiber, 25 February, 2002

Composition Projects

Transcendental Concert Studies Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

Completion of definitive, revised versions of some of these Studies was made possible by a composer-residency at the Montsalvat Arts Centre in Melbourne in the Autumn of 2010

Download PDF files of the following scores:

• Naming the Stars

Press comment on Naming the Stars:
BroadwayBaby.com (Larry Bartleet):
Each member of the trio had a solo piece. "Naming the Stars", Higuma’s solo, was fantastic; ethereal and elegant, it floated along and filled the church with its delicate melody.

• Snatched Voices
• Epiphany of Light
• Rainbow Lorikeets
• Unearthing the Earth
• Boy with Flute
• Red Autumn in Valvins
• Wild Cherries and Honeycomb
• Dances and Devilment and Sunlit Airs
• Under Aldebaran
• Tch'mala: The Rainbow Serpent
• Meaasures of Fire

Play Under Aldebaran
Play Wild Cherries
Play Dances and Devilment and Sunlit Airs

A selection of the Transcendental Concert Studies, played by Michael Kieran Harvey, has been released on CD in 2008. A complete recording, by Martin Jones, will be released in 2011.

Download articles from the Transcendental Concert Studies project

• What is Referential (‘Motivic’) Tonality, and How Does It Differ from Functional Tonality?
• ‘Performance-Oriented’ and ‘Work-Oriented’ Compositional Processes: What is the Difference, and How is It Exemplified in Selected Recent Compositional Applications?
• Revisiting ‘Simplicity and Richness’: Postmodernism after ‘The New Complexity’

Octet with Voices Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

Funded by the Scottish Arts Council

Project in collaboration with the Ives Quartet and Mockingbirds (Vocal Quartet), with the Hawthorne Quartet and Pandora's Vox (Vocal Quartet) and with the Edinburgh Quartet and Scottish Voices

PDF Score Download a PDF score of the Octet with Voices

Play the Octet with Voices

Press comment on Octet with Voices:

The Melbourne Age (Clive O'Connell):
Pick of the program was the Hair work, a setting of poems by Malouf, McAuley and the famous Judith Wright lyric that gave the work its title. Here the four voices were put to brilliant use, notably in the colouful word-painting of Malouf's Harmonice Mundi, and then a series of evocative solos for soprano Alison Morgan in To the Holy Spirit by Tasmania's noted Catholic poet.

But for an ideal illustration of Hair's insight into setting texts, the Wright poem proved the most engaging and gripping. The voices moved together and apart with masterly variety, the text given its due and remaining clear even in verbally complex passages, the accompanying string quartet shimmering with excitement and providing a vivid commentary on the verbal content, separate but equal with the Halcyon voices and having the last say in a postlude of unabashed euphony and humanity: a most moving work, that we could easily have heard again.

The Glasgow Herald (Michael Tumelty):
Graham Hair's plainly-titled Octet with Voices, in which four female singers from Scottish Voices joined with the Edinburgh Quartet in a performance conducted by the composer, was, in fact, far from plain. An exuberant triptych of settings of texts by David Malouf, James McAuley and Judith Wright, the beautifully-crafted Octet, which had all the colour and sensitivity of Ravel, lifted the concert onto a different level, with gleaming singing from the Scottish Voices, and the quartet's best playing of the night.

Sacred Songbook Project

Composition of some of the items in the Sacred Songbook was made possible by a composer-residency at the Montsalvat Arts Centre in Melbourne in the Autumn of 2010

• Yigdal (in Hebrew)
• Asma al-Husna (in Arabic)
• Veni Creator (in Latin)
• Ecstasy and Enlightenment: a sequence (for soprano, clarinet and string quartet) based on the Mystical Islamic poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi, in the elegant Edwardian (1903) translations of Glasgow theologian William Hastie (based in turn on the German versions of Friedrich Ruckert).
  
  

  Funded by the Scottish Arts Council

  
  Collaborators:
• Amanda Morrison (soprano), Ingrid Pearson (clarinet) and the Edinburgh String Quartet
• Richard Todd (Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh)
• St John's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh: Festival of Spirituality and Peace (Rev Donald Reid)
• Burrell Museum, Glasgow (Ms Noorah al-Gailani)
• St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, London (Ms Angela West)

American Waltzes Project

Download/Play (Playing requires Java) selected American Waltzes

• Play PDF Score Can't help singing (Jerome Kern)
• Play PDF Score Won't you buy my dreams of love (Vernon Duke)
• Play PDF Score By Strauss (George Gershwin)
• Play PDF Score Just One Way (Irving Berlin)
• Play PDF Score Out of my dreams (Richard Rodgers)

Play All Play American Waltzes (complete).

Church Music Projects

Composed for:

• Glasgow University Chapel Choir, cond Stuart Campbell
• Astra Chamber Choir (Melbourne), cond John McCaughey

Download/Play (Playing requires Java) selected Church Music

• Play PDF Score Hymn to St Peter
• Play PDF Score Nunc Dimittis
• Play PDF Score Psalm 23
• Play PDF Score Dancing, Piping, Drumming (carol)
• Play PDF Score O Fiery Spirit (anthem) (web version forthcoming)

Vernacular Paraphrases Project

Download/Play (Playing requires Java) selected Vernacular Paraphrases

• Play PDF Score Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Harold Arlen)

Microtonal Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

PDF File The Rosegarden Codicil

The Principal Investigator for this project (2006–2007) was Dr Ingrid Pearson, Deputy Director of the Graduate School, Royal College of Music. For this project, three microtonal songs (based on the tempered scale with 19 tones per octave) were composed, and workshopped with the musicians (Ingrid herself on clarinet, with soprano Amanda Morrison), in order to develop (via technological assistance from engineers Dr Nick Bailey and Dr Dougie McGilvray and advice on psychological aspects from Dr Richard Parncutt) some guidelines about the extent and limits of the musicians' perceptual and performing capacities with regard to microtonal materials.

Play PDF Score Download/Play (Playing requires Java)
Three Microtonal Songs for Soprano, Clarinet and Harmonium.

A more recent performance was prepared for a presentation at the International Computer Music Conference (Queen's University, Belfast, August 27, 2008) by Lisa Swayne (soprano), Alex South (clarinet) and Graham Hair (keyboard).

Play video Lisa Swayne (soprano), Alex South (clarinet) and Graham Hair (keyboard) rehearsing Three Microtonal Songs - no 3: Dance in the Chapel of Glasgow University, July, 2008

Australian Fellowship Projects

Funded by the Australia Council

Project begun in 2003-2005, extended to 2007
Play PDF Score Download/Play Frenzy and Folly, Fire and Joy
(Playing requires Java)

A more recent performance, by clarinettist Murray Khouri, was video-recorded in the Glasgow University Chapel in 2010. This video can be viewed on Mr Khouri's website: here

Web versions (score and audiofile) also forthcoming for:

• A Wind Symphony
• Harmonice Mundi
• A Creation Narrative
• Shouts and Dances

Lament for Santa Sophia Project

Funded by the Scottish Arts Council

Chorus and Electro-acoustic Sound.
Commissioned by Cappella Nova Choir (Glasgow), cond Alan Tavener
Recorded by the Astra Chamber Choir (Melbourne), April 2008
Play PDF Score Download/Play (Playing requires Java) Lament for Santa Sophia

Great Circle Project

• Part 1: Into the South (vocal score version)
Play Play


Also in preparation (score and audiofile):


• Part 2: Pacific Pathways

Funded by the AHRC of the UK




Funded by the Scottish Arts Council



• Part 3: The Flow of Occurence

Into the Shores of Light Project

Play PDF Score Download/Play (Playing requires Java) Into the Shores of Light

Press comment on Into the Shores of Light:

The Glasgow Herald (Michael Tumelty):
Graham Hair's deliciously eclectic Into the Shores of Light, inspired by the Australian composer's native coastal landscape: another piece which, in its dazzling orchestral palette, and its seductive swirling, Ravel-like rushes of colour, could have an immediate effect in mainstream orchestral programming.

O Venezia Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

A complete recording of O Venezia is currently being prepared for CD release. Play Meanwhile, play five excerpts from O Venezia

Download PDF files of excerpts from this project

• Cantata 1 (Star of the Sea)
• Cantata 2 (Waters Richer than Glass)
• Cantata 3 (To Work, To Meditate, To Warn)

These are excerpts from the three cantatas which comprise Part 1 of the O Venezia project. Parts 2 and 3 will also be included in the CD release.
Further performances of O Venezia will be given by Boston-based ensemble Tapestry, directed by Laurie Monahan, in 2009 and 2010

Download articles from the O Venezia project

• O Venezia: Texts, Rhetoric and Compositional Process in a Post-atonal Tonal Context
See also "Revisiting ‘Simplicity and Richness’: Postmodernism after ‘The New Complexity’ " (revised version now listed below under Transcendental Concert Studies Project).

Research Projects

Data Framework Project

Project to provide an infrastructure for the for the processing, storage and manipulation of musical information and to present this information is a manner which is immediately useful to those involved in (mono-disciplinary and) inter-disciplinary music research.
The Principal Investigator for this project is Dr Nick Bailey (Glasgow) with myself as Co-Investigator
Project currently under development.

The Anatomy of Listening Project
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Measurement, Analysis and Interpretation.

Funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Current Issues in Music Journal Project

Co-editors: Dr Ruth Lee Martin (Australian National University) and Dr Linda Kouvaras (Melbourne University)

PDF file 2007 issue

PDF file 2010 issue (web version in process of development)

Musica Scotica: 800 Years of Scottish Music Conferences Project

Conferences are held each year, on the last Saturday in April

PDF file Proceedings of the 2004 and 2005 conferences

Co-editors: Heather Kelsall and Dr Kenneth Elliott

Australian Modernism and Afterwards Project

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK and by the National Library of Australia (Harold White Fellowship)

This project gathers together, and is an on-going development of, a number of earlier studies on Australian 20th/21st-century topics:

• The Keith Humble Project (see details below)
• The Don Banks and Matyas Seiber Project (see details below)
• The Loose Canons Project (see details below)
• The Sitsky at Seventy-Five Project: In Search of New Worlds
• The Australian Modernism on CD Project

Download outputs from this project

• PDF file "The Interaction of Conflicting Forces in Keith Humble's Career, Musical Identity and Compositional Process, as Reflected in A Little Sonata in Two Parts"
• PDF file"Keith Humble’s Modernism: from homogenous motivic-thematic organicism to heterogenous gestural constructivism"
• PDF file "Dramatic Narrative and Musical Narrativity in Gillian Whitehead's Hotspur"
• PDF file Don Banks, Australian Composer: Eleven Sketches
• PDF file The Don Banks Collection in the National Library of Australia

Play Play (Playing requires Java) Gillian Whitehead's Hotspur

Play Play (Playing requires Java) Gillian Whitehead's Nga Haerenga

Web versions of the following forthcoming. Definitive versions of these papers will be published following the Australian Modernism Panel at the Musicological Society of Australia Conference, University of Melbourne, December 7/8, 2008:

• The Melbourne Schoenberg Diaspora: Studies towards an Intellectual History of Australian Modernism
• Caution and Recklessness: Pitch-Class Structure and Physical Gesture in Keith Humble's Cello Suite
• Aspects of the Emergence of Modernism in Australian Music: The Keith Humble Sources in the National Library of Australia

The output from this project concerning Don Banks has now split into several separate components:

• Don Banks, Australian Composer: Eleven Sketches
  PDF file Download a PDF file of this volume
  
  
• (forthcoming) Meeting Place: The Music of Don Banks.
  This more comprehensive volume will include updated versions of the articles from the volume Don Banks, Australian Composer: Eleven Sketches plus further studies previously given as conference or colloquium papers
  
  
• Download editions of scores by Don Banks
• One for Murray
• I'm Easy
• Fantasia
• Duo

Thomas Wilson Project

Funded by the Chancellor's Fund of Glasgow University

• PDF file "The Fantasia for Solo Cello: A Close Reading, with Reference to the Sketches and the Compositional Process"

Notis Musycall Project

Festschrift for Dr Kenneth Elliott at 75

• PDF file "Vocabulary, Syntax and Rhetoric in Thomas Wilson's Fourth String Quartet"

Matyas Seiber Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK and by the British Academy

Output from this project has now bifurcated into two separate volumes:

(1) Matyas Seiber: Four Case Studies
PDF file Download a PDF file of this volume

Download PDF files of excerpts from this book

• Permutazioni
• String Quartet No 3
• Improvisations
• Ulysses

• Seiber's Concertante Pieces
  A discussion of Seiber's 'non-concerto' pieces for soloist(s) and orchestra: Concertino, Elegy, Fantasia Concertante, Notturno, Pastorale and Burlesque and Tre Pezzi.
• Rhythmic Levels in Matyas Seiber: Tonal, Intervallic and Gestural Turnover
• Tonality and Atonality in Matyas Seiber

Tonality After Atonality Project

Under Development

Gedenkschrift Project for Andrew McCredie

Project in Memory of the late Professor Andrew McCredie, with Dr Jan Stockigt, University of Melbourne (under development)

Companion to Recent Scottish Music Project

Funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

PDF File Web version being progressively uploaded as from Nov 16 2007 (recent uploads: May 2009).

Companion to Scottish Music: Audio Files

Bogen Project

Empirical Study of Bowing Techniques in Bartok's Third String Quartet and other works.
The Principal Investigator for this project is Ms Carola Boehm (Department of Contemporary Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University)
Co-Investigators: Dr Amanda Bayley (Wolverhampton University), Dr Nick Bailey (Glasgow University: Electronics) and myself.
Project currently under development.
Preliminary Paper presented at the DACE "Listening to Music" Study Day on June 14, 2008 (see conference and colloquia listing, above)

Pierrot Lunaire Project

Empirical Study of Vocal Techniques in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
The Principal Investigator for this project is Jane Manning (international soprano)
Co-Investigators: Dr Nick Bailey and Mr Doug McGilvray (Glasgow University: Electronics) and myself.
Project currently under development.

Don Banks and Matyas Seiber Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

Now part of the larger Australian Modernism and Afterwards and Matyas Seiber Projects (see above)
Download articles from the Don Banks and Matyas Seiber project

• Don Banks, Matyas Seiber and mixed musical identity

Keith Humble Project

Funded by the AHRC of the UK

Now part of the larger Australian Modernism and Afterwards Project (see above)

Loose Canons Project

Studies of Australian women composers, deriving from the conference Loose Canons at the Australian National University in 2001. Now part of the larger Australian Modernism and Afterwards Project (see above)

The Larry Sitsky Festscrift Project

Studies of one of Australia's principal modernist composers, Larry Sitsky.
This study is now part of the larger Australian Modernism and Afterwards Project (see above)
A Festschrift for Professor Sitsky, edited by Dr Alistair Noble, is in preparation, and will appear under the Southern Voices imprint

After Modernity Project

An oral history approach to case studies in recent Australian piano, chamber and vocal ensemble/choral music, from 1975.
This study is now part of the larger Australian Modernism and Afterwards Project (see above)

Anthology Project

The Anthology Project assembles papers and scores from various research projects in a single volume (Musical Ideas, Musical Sounds) (second edition)

PDF file Download Musical Ideas, Musical Sounds (current version)

Diary of Recent, Current and Forthcoming Research and Composition Activities

Contact Details

Centre for Music Technology
Department of Electronics & Eloectrical Engineering
Rankine Building
Oakfield Avenue
Glasgow
G12 8LT
Scotland