Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

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Work Overview

The word Portal can spark any number of images within the imagination; I invoke it here as a sort of activation word, beckoning the listener to make their own connections between it and the music.

For me, the music I love can feel like a portal to abstract worlds of expression,and forests of mental associations.

Indeed, music has an uncanny ability to reflect our own mind and narratives back at us.

I wrote Portal as an ode, or a love letter, to the power of music to do exactly that: to make meaning out of abstraction, to spark a listener's own imagination and allow them to weave their own web of assocations amongst the material, to find their own path through it, and connect the sounds to their own mental world.

I also wrote this piece out of deep gratitude for what music has done for me.

The opening notes of Franz Schubert's own ode to music - An die Musik - act as an idée fixe; the beating heart of the Portal.

Work Details

Year: 2024

Instrumentation: String quartet

Duration: 20 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Advanced rhythms, some extended techniques, sections of quasi-improvisation

Commission note: Commissioned by University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne Recital Centre with funds provided by Jane Kunstler.. Commissioned by the Melbourne Recital Centre and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, with the support of Ms. Jane Kunstler

First performance: by Penny Quartet — 1 Nov 24. Melbourne Recital Centre

The composer notes the folowing styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:

Influenced by Witold Lutoslawski, and inspired by Schubert's An die Musik