MODART provides emerging compsoers with the opportunity to develop a new work for vocal ensemble and receive a public performance by the Song Company
MODART
MODART is a professional development project that provides opportunities for emerging composers to develop works for vocal ensemble, and which then receive public performance by The Song Company.
Biography: Andrew Robbie
Composer, music theorist, pianist. Recently completed degrees in composition and linguistics at the University of Sydney with the award of two Donald Peart Memorial Prizes and the University Medal. Interests centred around systemic functional linguistics and its relationship to composition, musical semantics and multi-modal discourse analysis. Sites range from the early 17th and 19th centuries to contemporary mainstream popular music. Currently a PhD candidate at Harvard University, supported by a Frank Knox Fellowship and the Fulbright Performing Arts Award. He now studies composition with Bernard Rands and theory with Christopher Hasty.
Program Notes: Virge des ciels
This virtuosic pop song is in praise of three Madonnas; the virgin of 13th century Marian cults, the comely wenches of Renaissance Italian lyrics, and the modern idol who unites these other two. A fragment from the title track for Die Another Day is subjected to various canon and magic square-like procedures, acting as a magic containment structure for the Old French trouvère text, with arching Petrarchan outbursts interleaved. Both this Marian text and Madonna's own text speak of supplication and the quelling of desire, here juxtaposed with music that is both lush and muscular.
