Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Answer Echoes is a development of a piece which began life as a piece for solo flute: Blow Flute. As in the solo piece, I was concerned to achieve a fluidity of rhythm by progressing in even notes of small value which are grouped in uneven "bundles" of 2, 3, 4, 5, units. These groups of notes steadily expand or contract and effectively dispel any idea of an underlying metre. I was aiming for a line which would sound fluid, and yet have a strong rhythmic impetus; in which the gathering accumulations and dispersions would give a feeling of eddies and currents.

In Answer Echoes the added parts follow different ways of expanding and contracting within the phrase. A regular metre is also present, so that there can be a tension between the parts which emphasize metre, and those which flow over it.

In a similar way, the phrases begin on a particular note centre, and gradually expand out of it. Sometimes they return to the same note centre, but mostly they expand and "settle" on a different centre. These different centres are part of a larger design of expansion and contraction; and in the places where the feeling of "settling" needs to be particularly emphasised to show the end of the whole section, I have deliberately used some devices of archaic cadential formulae, to achieve extra anchorage.