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Born in 1958 of Russian parents, he completed his
Bachelor of Music in Composition at the New South Wales Music Conservatory
in 1981 before studying with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory in
The Hague. While studying in Holland, Smetanin composed his first major
works including Track (in collaboration with the ensemble Hoketus) and The
Ladder of Escape for Harry Sparnaay1s Het Basklarinetten Kollektif, whose
title was later used for an entire series of new music cds released by
Attacca Records. Upon the composer1s return to Australia in 1984, his
works have continued to gather awards including the OSounds1 Australian
State Award, for Black Snow and Spray (the best chamber piece of 1991),
First Prize in the George Enescu International Competition (for Fylgjir),
and the Paul Lowen Award, Australia1s premier composition prize (for the
orchestral work The Shape of Things to Pass, 1999).
In 1993 the internationally acclaimed Elision ensemble of Melbourne
presented the first programme devoted entirely to Smetanin1s music,
including the song cycle The Skinless Kiss of Angels. This and many other
works were subsequently released on cd. In 1999 Smetanin was a jury member
of the Gaudeamus International Music Week and in 2000 Radio Bremen in
Germany devoted a complete programme to his work.
Smetanin1s music reveals a mixture of influences from the minimalist
tendencies of Andriessen to a more abrasive, hyper-energetic style, whose
roots can be found in sources as diverse as Stravinsky, Ofunk1 and Xenakis.
He has also worked extensively in music theatre including the epic
eight-hour long play The Ecstatic Bible by English playwright Howard
Barker at the 2000 Adelaide Festival. Smetanin has completed two chamber
operas: The Burrow (a Opsychological profile1 of Franz Kafka during his
last minutes of life), and Gauguin, recently premiered at the Melbourne
Festival, both with libretti by Alison Croggon. He is currently writing a
music-drama, Floating, for Australian television.
Smetanin teaches composition at the Sydney Conservatory.
Spray
The piece was written for the Het Trio. The title arose quite fortuitously
from a conversation after a meal at an Indian restaurant. Nothing culinary
or anecdotal was intended: the word simply cropped up and suddenly sounded
like a nice title for a piece! Of course, the title then partly determined
the music: the mainly high range, the Oglitter1, and above all, the fact
that most of the chords which make up the piano part are deliberately
slightly broken, or Osprayed1. Both the concept and its execution may
suggest something to be thrown off effortlessly. But that1s not how it is
for the performers, and nor was it for the composer. Smetanin says that
initially, Spray caused him endless trouble. Largely, this was a matter of
finding the right balance between (to use Schoenberg1s phrase) style and
idea. Smetanin1s earlier work had been heavily influenced by minimalism,
and thus made much use of repetition. In turning to
a more abrasively modernist style (notably in the notorious orchestral
piece Black Snow, Orepetitive1 techniques were summarily cast aside. Yet
in Spray, the composer's aim and task was to reintroduce the idea of
repetition without falling back into minimalist ways.
Formally the piece consists of 10 Oblocks1 which evolve from relative
simplicity to relative complexity. Each Oblock1 consists of a rising
figure that gradually accumulates density and then thins out towards the
top. OEvolution1, in this context, means that the blocks get both longer,
and contain more subtle internal subdivisions (for example, the number and
timing of the laud accents that punctuate the Ospray1), they also ascend
higher and higher. The piano is the principal actor: the bass clarinet
provides a sort of Obass line1, which the flute1s Oharmonics1 are partly a
willful avoidance of the standard flute sound, but more positively, place
a sort of gauze-like haze around
the piano1s upper notes.
(Extracted from notes by Richard Toop)
The Power of Everyday Things
Everyday things are obviously all around us. Things such as rocks, animals,
numbers, the sky and the planets and Sun. Often these things are included
in or are the basis of esoteric, cabalistic and other exercises in
prediction of things that might happen to us in our lives; possibly
affecting our behaviour and perception. These predictions are almost
always spurious, fatuous and founded on nonsense. The constructivism of
much music to me seems to be similar to the use of the same everyday and
simple things to predict and organise it and similarly, as so often is the
case, the higher degree of constructivism, the less desirable the musical
outcomes can be. This is a Ocompositional1 problem I have been dealing
with for many years, shunning it at times as being too difficult. The
Power of Everyday Things is one of my most recent attempts to address my
dilemma of constructivism and the sound of music. The Power of Everyday
Things was composed in 2002 and was commissioned by De Ereprijs Ensemble
of Holland.
Michael Smetanin
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