There was something so innately constant about the expansive surroundings of the Denali National Park & Preserve, despite it being unique from every angle. The distance between the beginning and end of a hike in the Denali's mist meshed into a sublime yet hazy memory, as if we almost can't, even to this day, truly comprehend what we witnessed. 

~ Dedicated to Katy Abbott, who continually inspires me in learning and in life ~

This work was written for Corvus Ensemble and the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival as part of Composing in the Wilderness 2022.

This work received its joint-world premiere performances by Corvus Ensemble on the 30th and 31st of July 2022 at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival and Denali National Park and Preserve Visitor Centre respectively.

Composed in Denali and Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.

***This work was awarded the 2022 David Henkels Composition Award by the Musical Society of Victoria.

© Robert McIntyre 2022 roberttmcintyre.com

the distance between (LIVE)(flute/alto flute, alto sax, cello & vibes)(2022)(Corvus Ensemble @FSAF)

PERFORMERS: 
Luna Nova Trio performed 'See through me' on the 17/06/2022 at the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival, Tennessee USA.
Marisa Polesky, violin
Hannah Schmidt, cello
Maeve Brophy, piano

*This work was written for the award winning Trio Immersio as part of the 2021 ICEBERG New Music Institute.

*This work received 2nd Place Prize in the 2022 International Luna Nova (Belvedere Chamber Music Festival) Composition Contest.

Programme Note:
Empathy requires perspective. It is the process of positioning one in another’s experiences and worldview, as if they are seeing through that different pair of eyes as their own. Yet, perspective also questions empathy, where embodying someone’s experience may not always initially gel with another, necessitating work, space, and contemplation. Two perspectives encompassed by a weight of resonance unravels how the beauty of dissonance can create its own unique form of unity, reflecting the true, complex nature of empathy itself and how it reveals what is truly worth fighting for.

~ Dedicated to Tom ~

This work received its world premiere performance on the 30th of July 2021 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria.

© Robert McIntyre 2021

See through me (LIVE)(piano trio)(2021)(Luna Nova Trio)(BCMF 2022)

daz[ies] is a work that explores the sonic realm between piccolo and tape (backing track), which for this arrangement has substituted in oboe, bringing new depths and colours to light. The piece utilises quoted material from The Hunger Games referencing, fragmenting and repurposing the “Deep In The Meadow” lullaby (Jennifer Lawrence version), in the form of covered vocals by Lindsay Hicks.
In this work I aim to offer a stretched snapshot in time where you can imagine yourself on the grass coddled in the safety of daisies, allowing any good or bad thoughts you may have to fixate on and then disperse.

Time: ~ 5minutes 20 seconds

This work is dedicated to Lindsay Hicks,
a dear and close friend who always reminds me there's somewhere safe among the flowers.

Quoted Text:
Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your eyes And when again they open, the sun will rise.
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true Here is the place where I love you.
© Suzanne Collins & Sting 2015

*** This work received its world premiere performance on 15/05/2022 in “GLOW” @ fortyfivedownstairs Melbourne, VIC, Australia, by Jasper Ly (ob.).

*Photo is of free domain: credit to Stijn Dijkstra

© Robert McIntyre, Beaumaris, May 2022 www.roberttmcintyre.com

daz[ies] (LIVE)(rewritten for oboe & tape)(2022)(Jasper Ly @45downstairs)

https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/product/our-duty-to-care-song-cycle-for-soprano-piano-trio

Our Duty to Care is a cross-disciplinary music composition based on the legal case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, where eight Australian teenagers (namely Anjali Sharma and Isolde Raj-Seppings, Ambrose Hayes, Tomas Arbizu, Bella Burgemeister, Laura Kirwan, Ava Princi & Luca Saunders) represented by an octogenarian nun (Sister Marie Brigid Arthur) as their litigation guardian, sued the Minister for the Environment (Cth) and Vickery Coal Pty Ltd.
They successfully argued that the Minister owed them and other Australian children a duty of care, which was supposedly breached when the Minister approved the extraction of coal from a coal mine.

Whilst this decision was later successfully appealed by the Minister, this case monumentally established that climate change is legally real – with all submitted scientific evidence un-refuted. This denotes a significant shift, as we are no longer fighting to prove our climate crisis, but rather urging all to fight the crisis itself.

This work sets newly commissioned text by poet, close friend & regular collaborator Savanna Wegman, who has re-interpreted my own legal research about the case into a 3-part poem, which has in turn structured the song cycle. It embodies climate anxiety, the nervous excitement of the trial and its success, and the melancholic yet hopeful transference of ideology: how far we’ve come & how far we still have left to go.
Composed as part of and made possible by a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship.

Timing: ~ 18 minutes 
1: Robed in Apocalypse (~6min)
2: they will rise, as birds fall (~5min)
3: The Changing Wilds (~7min)

Written for Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio. Dedicated to all current and future generations of Australians who inherit a climate crisis. 

Bridgette Kelsey, soprano
SOLSTICE
Isabel Hede, violin (guest)
Stephanie Arnold, cello 
Georgina Lewis, piano

Commissioned Cover Art Illustration © by Lucinda McIntyre.

Commissioned Sext Text: ‘Prophecy, as a fire comes’ by Savanna Wegman © 2022 
Text used for 1: Robed in Apocalypse:
No more prophecy 
until the sky begets a softer 
Everlasting sun 
or
the youth unravel 
braided darkness
rushing innocence
all over Earth 

Shadows designed 
for our tired birth places
ghosting the new life 
upon babbling breaths  
 
And so the young are born 
New guardians 
Robed in 
Apocalypse

Text used for 2: they will rise, as birds fall:
Know they will rise
As disappearance is written  
on ancient weather 
become beast
She watches above 
as birds fall 
out of the mother sky 

March into the high courts 
of creators and destroyers
Anjali Sharma and the army 
                  Future keepers
Enter this laced arena 
burning horizons in their bellies 

The Minister surveys the gravity
how deep we may breathe
how quickly we will fall
when the Earth veins split 
and the sanctuary howls 
at its open flesh  

The weather sounds like a whisper 
in these walls that stand for justice 
Lay down a pocketful 
of bird bones
of poison oceans

Text used for 3: The Changing Wilds
They speak for the
forgotten
Their ancestral home-body
Their drowning, burning worlds
for their lands that have lost hope 
together their voices are louder
Becoming suns
Becoming rains 
Becoming rivers multiplied 
Becoming the skyward call 
of protection 

this call
Is honoured
the duty of care rewritten
A first for acknowledging
the changing wilds

Evidence now held
in palms that believe in
collapse
and might begin to
listen
Blessing the horror 
with a soft breath of courage 

Remember how
young sacred tears 
are greeting Earth 
like miracle seeds

Our Duty to Care (LIVE)(song cycle for soprano & piano trio)(2023)(Bridgette Kelsey & Solstice Trio)

Recent discourse and research have and continue to examine how the loss of sonic diversity in wild sounds, due to species extinctions and industrial noise pollution, are cutting off human connection to the Earth in a slow, solemn and unconscious process. Remnants of a Resonance explores this concept through the unique duo pairing of the flute and bassoon, playing with registral, timbral and articulative nuances across a narrative of initial explorative unity, flowing urgency of reality, and fragmentation of what once was. While sound is innately and importantly ephemeral, an extinction-induced silence is not – the more we continue to abuse our Earth’s resources, the greater the [sonic] loss.

Dedicated to Christine & Sam.

TIMING: ~4.5-5 minutes

This work was specially composed for flute and bassoon duo of Simone Maurer and Lyndon Watts.

World premiere performance by Simone Maurer and Lyndon Watts on 21/05/2024 in ‘Contrasts: Music for Flute and Bassoon’ at Hanson Dyer Hall, as part of the 2024 Hanson Dyer Hall Series presented by the Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, University of Melbourne.

Remnants of a Resonance (2024)(duo for flute and bassoon)(LIVE)(Simone Maurer & Lyndon Watts)

Every third dawn is a subtle contemporary climate-change re-telling of the Persephone myth. It draws on the creation of seasons through her survived altercation with Hades, denoting a shift in the world from eternal Spring to it only encompassing the world one third of every year. In parallel, it is now as if our world’s ‘Spring’ is being sacrificed by the climate crisis and ongoing inaction, or more often, inadequate action. We consume our planets precious finite resources as if they are lush pomegranate seeds, yet it is those same seeds that bound a Goddess of Spring and the world itself to a much darker existence.

~ Dedicated to Martina & Madeleine

Performers in this recording from its Australian premiere: Bridgette Kelsey (sop.), Jenna Choi (fl.) and Jennifer Enchelmaier (pn.).

SET TEXT: Every third dawn (2024) by Savanna Wegman
Tiered rivers pour from above 
Deeper than this terra firma 
Every shade is drunk of red 
She and the velvet, burn
the promise of rain

And warm azure falling
Here, soft libations run
And from her pomegranate veins 
Flows every third dawn

next sun, blessed 
rushing wind, cradled
a swansong, opened
As Underworlds awaken

Her body fell
From the garden of Zenith
Deep to the end of her rivers, Nadir 
Restless, beyond the breath
And the beginnings

TIMING: ~6minutes

*Commissioned by Martina Rosaria O’Connell for ChamberFest DUBLIN 2024 | RIAM.

Every third dawn received its world premiere performance by Martina Rosaria O’Connell, Sarah Van Den Heuvel-Mouchot and David Vesey at the Royal Irish Academy of Music’s 2024 ChamberFest DUBLIN, in the Whyte Recital Hall on the 01/05/2024.

It subsequently received its Australian premiere performance by Bridgette Kelsey, Jenna Choi and Jennifer Enchelmaier as part of Bridgette Kelsey’s Honours Year Recital, held in Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University and Queensland Conservatorium of Music on the 11/112024.

Every third dawn © Robert McIntyre 2024 www.roberttmcintyre.com

Every third dawn (LIVE)(trio for soprano, flute & piano)(2024)(Bridgette Kelsey's Honours Recital)

Compositional Insight per s(1)(a)-(d)
1 Purposes
The main purposes of this Composition are––
(a) to unveil unconscious bias within our legal system relating to our construction of Victorian legislation and how our laws are often created in a non-inclusive way through referencing the gender binary, instead of utilising gender-neutral language; and
(b) to highlight this issue of bias through the particular irony of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) and how it defines discrimination with using ‘he or she’ in its definition, as well as the use of ‘he or she’ in the Constitution Act 1975 (Vic) when appointing judges;
(c) to utilise additional pieces of Victorian legislation where applicable; and
(d) to harness cross-disciplinary measures of music and law to create a new ~5min composition.

World Premiere per s(2)(1)
2 Commencement
(1) This Composition comes into official operation on the day on which it receives Royal Assent, being its world premiere date. This date is the 29th of June 2024, with the work performed for the first time at ‘Aether Duo – New Dawn’ by Robert McIntyre, Tempo Rubato, 34 Breese Street, Brunswick VIC 3056.

Aim per s(3)(a)-(f)
3 Objectives
The main purposes of this Composition are––
(a) to create a legal and musical composition that acts as a commentary on our current non-inclusive law-making tendencies, to be submitted for Future Lawyer (LAWS90243) as a project and concurrently owned (with all rights reserved) to the Composer for all current and future use;
(b) to raise awareness about unconscious bias through creative use of the law and contemporary-classical composition, employing electro-acoustic backing track (tape) and an acoustic instrument for performance (flute);
(c) to encourage the identification and elimination of systematic causes of discrimination such as the use of the gender binary within existing and new legislation;
(d) to promote and facilitate the progressive realisation of equality and inclusive gender equity through newly accessible musical means;
(e) to use my time interning at the Commission of Gender Equality in the Public Sector in 2023 as a legal research intern investigating LGBTQIA+ perspectives, coupled with my experience in legal compliance training creating Unconscious Bias, Diversity and Inclusion, and Discrimination module courses, in a newfound, reflective way;
(f) to engage Future Lawyer course materials, seminar discussions, additional research and select excerpts from pieces of legislation as the legal and academic backbone of the musical composition and its purpose.

...

Structure per s(6)(1)
6 Structural Reasoning
(1) I have constructed this Composition’s programme/insight note and score as if it is its own piece of legislation, in the effort to not only mirror the composition’s subject matter, but also to expose future musicians who will perform the work to what a statute generally looks like. This way, I can equally draw legal minds into a directly relevant space, while also broadening potential lay-person flautists who may rarely interact with the law and legislation.

Codifying Neutralities (LIVE)(2024)(solo flute & tape)(performed by Robert McIntyre @ Tempo Rubato)

(composed 2018, revised 2022)

Feathers Taking Flight is a flute and piano work centred on the importance of taking or maintaining perspective, particularly after facing feelings of failure, confusion or regret.

The work emphasises the uniqueness of harmonics and beauty of modality that the flute can bring to light, conveying links to post-minimalism. It is vital as humans to realise where we are in the present moment and the true potential we have as individuals, for as soon as we erase self-deprecation and embody self-worth: we soar.

Timing: ~ 4 minutes

Dedicated to Victoria Fouet and Margaret Crawford: two flute teachers integral to my artistic journey, both as a flautist and composer.

*This work won the 2022-23 Leslie Barklamb Flute Composition Competition for the Intermediate Piece Division (18 Years & younger performers), making it the set piece for this section in the annual Leslie Barklamb Scholarship for its 50th Anniversary Competition. It was selected and commissioned by the Victorian Flute Guild and Melbourne Composers’ League.

Flautist: Lily Brant
Pianist: Anna Rutkowska-Schock
Performed at the 2023 Australian Flute Festival

© Robert McIntyre

Feathers Taking Flight (LIVE)(flute & piano)(2022)(Lily Bryant & Anna Rutkowska-Schock)(@AFF2023)

PHOENIX is a work centred on the continual process/cycle of dedication, exhaustion, re-motivation, and in turn re-incarnation. The instrumentation consists of alto saxophone, cello, and piano, utilising minimalist piano gestures and hemiolas with dovetailed and antiphonal phrases across the saxophone and cello.

The piece in itself has deep personal meaning, functioning as the embodiment of my own hard work and adversities across my 2018 year. It acts as a reminder to always realise that the ‘burning out’ phase in every journey is crucial, and that the moment of becoming ‘hopeful again’ should never cease. Reflected in the piece, we always end up at our beginnings, yet somehow more complex and grounded from the experiences and memories experienced alone and shared with others. We are ‘reborn’, the very same, but very different.

Time: ~ 6 minutes

Written for and dedicated to Collide Trio, featuring Joseph Lallo (alto saxophone), Yelian He (cello) and Yasmin Rowe (piano).

© Robert McIntyre

*PHOENIX received its world premiere by Collide Trio in "Phoenix" @ Hanson-Dyer Hall 10/05/2022, as part of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Hanson-Dyer Hall Series.

PHOENIX

PHOENIX (LIVE)(trio for alto saxophone, cello, & piano)(2019)(Collide@Melbourne Recital Centre 2024)

Soprano: Amelia Jones
Piano: Stephan Cassomenos

INSIGHT
A Sea Spray of Ash is work for solo soprano with minimal yet reverberant piano accompaniment, confronting the issue of environmental collapse, which poses a sobering threat to our existence. It conveys a narrative of ash covering the shores, natural disasters, and a reminiscent moment of when the Earth was pure, right before a solemn caution to not silence its desperate plea for survival. This work was composed during and inspired by the emergence of the 2019 Global Climate Crisis Strikes.	
					
~ Dedicated to Bridgette, Amanda and Amelia ~	

Timing: ~ 4-5minutes

PERFORMANCE NOTE
The cross-headed notes imply spoken text through whispers and shushes, with a pitch still indicated for any potentially desired Sprechstimme. Each shush is also to be done with the hand-gesture brought up close to the nose and lips. For the pianist, they are notated as pedal lifts at the same time as 3 shushes.

SET TEXT
Carbon dated evacuation
Glacial tsunami
Tectonic collapse 

Caldera crystallised
Cubic miles
Unearthed 

Atmosphere
Landslide
Ash

Though that is all in the future –
Now, I stand with you on the shore
Looking back beyond the hinterland;
An early morning omen
Of amber light
Emerging over the mountain.
(by Anonymous) 

This work received its joint public world premiere performance on the 17th of April and 22nd of May 2021 by Anna Fraser + Jack Symonds (Sydney Conservatorium of Music) and Amelia Jones + Stephan Cassomenos (Melbourne Recital Centre Primrose Potter Salon) as part of the 2021 inaugural KAMMERKLANG Call for Scores, one of two works only selected for both performances. 

*** This work won the inaugural No Divide KC 2022 International Art Song Competition (USA)
*** This work was selected by the Australian Music Centre as one of six submissions to the Australian Section of the 2025 ISCM World New Music Days Festival (Portugal) with subsequent selection by Miso Music Portugal to represent Australia in 2025’s festival between 30th May – 7th June in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal.

© Robert McIntyre 2019 www.roberttmcintyre.com

A Sea Spray Of Ash (LIVE)(soprano & piano)(2019)(Amelia Jones & Stefan Cassomenos)

When birds fly is a work for mixed sextet, with instrumentation including:

Flute/piccolo
Bass Clarinet (in Bb)
Violin
Cello
Vibraphone/Glockenspiel
Piano

Inspired by the 2019 NGV Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition "The Transient Landscape", this work aims to embody the continual unity by the birds throughout the gallery. This ties in with a Gestalt principle known as ‘common fate’, and how even a flock of birds can all move together simultaneously without preconception; something that we all as humans could apply more to our world today.

The work has minimalist inflections, and is structured harmonically on an 8-chord sequence split evenly for the first three sections, finally ending on two chords within the cycle for the last section that have particularly special meaning to me.

© Robert McIntyre 2019

(Unimelb Musicians - Rehearsal)

When birds fly (LIVE)(mixed sextet)(2019)(Syzygy Ensemble)

Crossed Stars is a piece centred around a newly created non-octaving mode, designed on exploring the duality between the black and white keys of the piano, whilst also delving into rhythmic techniques and the extended use of pedalling. Playing on the expression of ‘star-crossed lovers’, this work focuses on the individuality of the mode when separated and the underlying connectedness when merged together.

Pianist: Laura Abraham

© Robert McIntyre 2018

Crossed Stars (LIVE)(solo piano)(2018)(Laura Abraham)

Syrup and Silicone is centred on the narrative of internal standards within the queer community – reflecting on past experiences of being told “you’re not gay enough”, “you’re not really gay” and so on. 

The queer community is a such a beautiful, vibrant one with so many diverse people – like a rich, sweet syrup. Yet, what has also been fostered within is internal marginalisation and a certain adhesive, plastic fakeness – like silicone. 

The work is highly personal and aims to call into question the irony of such an accepting community that concurrently can create such a sense and need to still conform to a set of criteria, instead of thriving in our individuality. 

For me, my sexuality as a gay man is a part of my identity, but by no means my whole identity and I believe it is paramount to let anyone within the queer community freely determine that themselves.

The work was commissioned by Divisi Chamber Singers and Sally Whitwell as part of the inaugural 2020 “Compose Queer” Initiative in FEB 2020, and received its world premiere on 26th FEB 2021 at 75 Reid Street Fitzroy North, Australia.

The work sets commissioned poetry for this project by Naarm (Melbourne, AUS) based artist, writer and theatre practitioner Savanna Wegman, a close colleague and friend. 
				   		     		      Time: ~ 4mins 40 seconds

SET TEXT
Excerpt from the poem “Palm Reading”

My Hands are wide open
They read soft perfumed palms, primed for an encounter.
Searchlights that look too closely, (for) too long
Smooth me into marble, a figure I can’t recognise
I wait for calm and comfort in the dawn,
Suspended in syrup and silicone
© Savanna Wegman, March 2020

***since its premiere, Syrup and Silicone has received repeat performances and also been featured on Divisi Chamber Singers’ debut album “Spectrum”:  Australia’s first ever fully queer/LGBTQIA+ classical music album sourcing queer/LGBTQIA+ local composers and text.

Performers: Divisi Chamber Singers
Premiered on 26/02/21 at 75 Reid St Fitzroy North

Illustration © Lucinda McIntyre
All rights reserved © Robert McIntyre 2020

Syrup and Silicone (LIVE)(SSAATTBB & piano)(2020)(Divisi Chamber Singers)

daz[ies] is a work that explores the sonic realm between piccolo and tape (backing track). The piece utilises quoted material from The Hunger Games referencing, fragmenting and repurposing the “Deep In The Meadow” lullaby (Jennifer Lawrence version), in the form of covered vocals by Lindsay Hicks.

In this work I aim to offer a stretched snapshot in time where you can imagine yourself on the grass coddled in the safety of daisies, allowing any good or bad thoughts you may have to fixate on and then disperse. 

This work is dedicated to Lindsay Hicks,
a dear and close friend who always reminds me
there's somewhere safe among the flowers.

Piccolo: Lindsay Hicks

© Robert McIntyre 2020

*Online iso-performance @ MCM Honours Composition Festival "METAMORPHOSIS" 28/10/2020

*Live premiere performance @ La Mama Courthouse by Laila Engle, as part of Homophonic BYOB Midsumma Fesital 13/02/2022

daz[ies] (LIVE)(piccolo & tape)(2020)(Lindsay Hicks)

Intercept is a sonata for oboe and piano duo based on the ‘Active Process of Reflection’, where an entity, event or mentor intercepts and intervenes in order to assist in healthy and effective reflection. This is seen through a four-stage process, which in turn structures this work. My interpretation is as follows:

1.	PRIMING (initial confusion, preparing to reflect once intercepted)

2.	GUIDING (the most substantial aspect, breaking down past ideologies in order to forge newer ones)

3.	MOMENTUM (realised improvement, call to action)

4.	TERMINATION (display of independence, unity and success)

Zooming out, this work comments on how large world events such as COVID-19, Black Lives Matter Movement and the constancy of Climate Change (recent Australian Bushfires), force our global community into a collective reflection. When such impactful phenomena occur, there’s really nowhere else to look first than inwards.

Oboe: Jasper Ly
Piano: Leigh Harrold

~ Dedicated to my dear and close friends Jasper Ly & Sam Williams 

*Online iso-performance @ MCM Honours Composition Festival "METAMORPHOSIS" 28/10/2020

*Received its live world premiere performance @fortyfivedownstairs "GLOW" 15/05/2022 by Jasper Ly & Peter Dumsday

© Robert McIntyre 2020

Intercept - duo sonata for oboe and piano

Intercept (LIVE)(sonata for oboe & piano duo)(2020)(Jasper Ly & Leigh Harrold)

Composer & Flautist | Juris Doctor Graduate | Changing Wilds Ensemble | Aether Duo | Wattle Fellow
www.roberttmcintyre.com

Robert McIntyre is an award-winningAustralian composer based in Melbourne. Please direct any enquiries to: rtm.composition@gmail.com

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_______________________________________________________________

Robert McIntyre – Composer

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