This is an excellent work, Robert.  Full of pathos that emotionally connects.  Congratulations on the work and also on the wonderful performance.

Listening again Robert.  It is really worth spending the time with this poignant work.

Taking five, waiting for the time to arrive, searching for the will to survive, on the drive of your lives
Taking four, chilling for another cold war, dreaming of the broken dance floor, falling through another trap door, hoping for more
Taking three, dominoes are falling over me, imprisoned in the land of the free, submerged in a fake reality
Taking two, power trippers calling after you, looking for another breakthrough, rejoicing at the callous menu, it’s true
Taking one, mad dogs running for the sun, fat cats have only just begun, creaming cream, having fun

Counting Down

Evenings in the Garden of Time

Feel free to rework or anything
Artwork by Trevor Grimshaw: https://pin.it/5NMUwv8

Daggry

Witnessing the fascinating conjunction of Venus and Jupiter from my hostel window prompted me to revisit one of my early attempts at writing music for solo MIDI electronics. 

"Celestial Dance", composed in May 2019, is in three parts, each following the other attacca, without pause. The harmonic structure of the work is derived from the clash (conjunction!) of two diminished seventh chords, with their root notes a semitone apart. Pierre Boulez had used such a chord in Sur Incises (and Incises)  which piqued my interest in its sonority. The instrumentation albeit MIDI oriented (which allowed me to push the instrumental performance to superhuman virtuosity) is made up of the instruments Boulez used in Sur Incises - with the addition of an electronic piano and solo strings. 

Celestial Dance, for electronics (2019)

Here I wrote and sang a french text addressing the famous John Searle's Chinese Room argument that challenges the strong AI claims based on the functionalist understandig of mental states. The instrumental was sent to me by Gérald Olivieri sometime ago.

La Chambre Chinoise

Je me disais qu'elle était belle,
en m'expliquant son doctorat
sur l'intelligence artificielle.
Et je buvais sa douce voix :

- Figure toi emprisonné
dans une chambre pleine de tiroirs 
marqués de caractères chinois
que nous savons bien distinguer, 
mais sans savoir ce qu'ils veulent dire.

Des prisonniers, oui, mais il y a bien pire.   
Nous agissons sans rien comprendre.
On nous présente des caractères,
et il faut vite trouver 
le tiroir correspondant
que nous ouvrons juste pour voir 
les caractères qu'il y a dedans.
Rapidement on les copie
et on les poste à la sortie.

Tu crois au coeur? Détrompe toi.
C'est pas possible le bonheur
car ça c'est tout ce que nous sommes!

Tout ébloui, je répondis:
- Pour moi, tout ça c'est du chinois! 
Si nous sommes juste des machines 
contraintes à travailler des signes
pourquoi tu viens me dire tout ça?

Elle répondit baissant les yeux:
- Oh! Pour rien... Pour causer, quoi...

Et puis, soudain, j'ai vu un signe: 
Une larme glissant sur son visage.
Et la machine qui est en moi 
voulait la prendre dans mes bras.

La Chambre Chinoise (over G Olivieri instrumental)

Updated June 7, 2023: Synline has made collaboration work for me.
https://soundcloud.com/synline/the-river?si=d85aada01c7b4a0a9c8e26a590f06cce&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

--
In January this year, we lost the great musician and drummer of YMO, Yukihiro Takahashi. As if following him, last month, Ryuichi Sakamoto also passed away. Having lost two respected musicians, I find myself without emotional support and have been creating music daily, tracing their music and lives. Unconsciously, the songs I create are heavily influenced by their music. This song is one of them. When I listen to the finished piece, I feel it somewhat resembles YMO's "Expecting Rivers." These days, I find "HOPE" in the Milky Way, the heavenly river that spans the sky.

Rivers of Aspiration

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)

“Calling winter”

Art work: Pexels via Pixabay

しみ透れ、つきぬけ
火事を出せ、雪で埋めろ
刃物のやうな冬が来た

高村光太郎（1883-1956）「冬が来た」より

Cold air, soak everything, penetrate everything.
Start a fire. Cover everything with snow.
Winter has come like a blade.

The lyrics are taken from the poem "Winter is Coming" by Kotaro Takamura (1883-1956).

Calling Winter

My submission to the Naviar Haiku 
challenge #516.

Dappled Seahorses Dance

Dappled Seahorses Dance -naviarhaiku516

Remastered by Houman (https://soundcloud.com/houmans)

Flying in the Dream

Returning

Walking through the pitch black night your other senses are heightened. Finding the hope and beauty in a frightening situation.

Theory Notes: makes a lot of use of mixolydian/lydian hybrids and whole tones scales as well as tone rows to get a dreamy chromatic effect. Some influences are Debussy, Ravel, Chopin, Scriabin, and Uematsu.

For me the repeating right hand figure has an immersive effect.

Starless Night

Composer & Flautist | Juris Doctor Candidate | Creative & Administrative Professional
www.roberttmcintyre.com

Robert McIntyre is an Australian composer keen to consider commissions, collaborations, and more - please enquire and email at: rtm.composition@gmail.com

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__________________________________________________________________

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

Robert McIntyre – Composer

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Christopher Larkins | Composer

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