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(1980-89)
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Page Anchors
Ekstasis
Collide
Mephisto
Attack / Duo
Dead Songs
Barcaole
Calling Music
Stick Dance III
Devil's Music
Chorale, Demon..
Diver's Lament
12 Variations
Data es Lux
Winter Ground
Tempore Stellae
Excerpts from Selected Reviews (1990-1999)
Ekstasis (1990)
"The second new work was Ekstasis (1990) by Andrew Schultz and here
was originality indeed, with a multitude of anguished, increasingly urgent
and complex sounds emerging from a silence that itself added a dimension,
finally sinking into calm. This was ecstasy in a sensual, sexual sense,
musically transcribed." [Fred Blanks, Sydney Morning Herald]
“Andrew Schultz’s Ekstasis, from the Song of Songs, with its
skilful elevation of dissonance to express emotional agony, was very powerful.”
[William Pearce, The Examiner]
Collide (1990, rev. 1998) (back to top)
“And speaking about interesting: listen to the longest work on the
CD - Schultz’s Collide. There will be not one single moment of boredom.
The piece has been written in a variation form and the strong theme gets
your full attention immediately. Attention which is aroused every time
again with every new variation. In short, the piece and its especially
fascinating rhythms will make you sit on the edge of your seat. Extremely
well played [by Duo Contemporain] by the way.” [Erica de Wijs, De
Klarinet]
“Andrew Schultz’s revised and cut version of Collide features
incredible mallet technique from Bernat. This rhythmically complex and
technically difficult fourteen minute marathon in one movement is enviably
a polished performance…The work itself germinates and builds to
a very powerful ending.” [Diana Tolmie, Australian Clarinet, October
1999]
“Mephisto” (1990) (back to top)
“Schultz asks for quotation marks around the title of his “Mephisto”
to acknowledge the resonances set up by its references to a legend so
variously familiar. The performances [by Perihelion] are strong and vital;
the music is remarkable." [Roger Covell, SMH]
“ a highly suggestive and expansive septet . . . worth hearing again.”
[Clive O’Connell, The Age, 26 August 1991]
Attack and Duo Variations (1990) (back to top)
“two typically skilful and bumpily arresting scores” [Roger
Covell, 23/2/1998, SMH]
Dead Songs (1991) (back to top)
"Schultz's Dead Songs cycle, set to texts drawn from gravestone inscriptions
in seaside cemeteries, is a work of art of a high order, adroitly shaped
to...lead to an ending of universal resonance. Its first performance...affirmed
the creative poise of a composer who feels sufficient confidence in his
own judgement to write not a single note more than is absolutely necessary....[A]
vital, spellbinding experience." [Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald]
“Andrew Schultz is another young composer who writes music of substance
and expression. His Dead Songs is a long, complex, and very satisfying
setting of adaptations of epitaphs seen at seaside cemeteries in New South
Wales. Scored for soprano, clarinet, cello, and piano, it is tightly composed
and expressively executed.” [HICKEN, “The Newest Music,”
American Record Guide 60:1 (January-February 1997) p.245]
“a stunning and ecstatic unaccompanied reverie,…set the scene
for a remarkable performance. Schultz’s trademark glissandi were
combined with virtuosic passages to make this a veritable tour de force.”
[Neil Mason, The Courier Mail, 17/11/1993]
Barcarole (1992) (back to top)
“Wrought, and very effective . . . and truly melancholy, not an
ascription one can often make to any recent music, let alone a miniature.”
[Chris Dench, Sounds Australian]
Calling Music: Contrafactum I (1992) (back to
top)
“In his Calling Music, Schultz uses the trio “Soave sia il
vento”, from Cosi fan tutte, to punctuate his comment on death.
Its gentle opening using wind chimes creates a mystical effect, and much
of the piece sustains that spirit throughout. Most appealing are the muted
and converging tones. The oboe soliloquy was haunting, but evolved into
a small contrapuntal exchange between oboe, bassoon and flute. …the
work is a powerful, elegaic statement.” [Barry Walmsley, The Newcastle
Herald, 19/9/1992]
“The work begins quietly with percussion and winds producing sounds
which are redolent of bush breezes and coo-ees. When the strings enter
they are high and soft but the violas and cellos soon introduce a little
two-note figure which is the essential structural element of the rest
of the music. The composer fore-warned us in his program annotation that
this is a contrafactum – literally a vocal piece with a new text
substituted but here, rather, it is influnced by other music, namely the
sighing Trio, “Soave sia il vento” from Cosi.” [John
Carmody, Sun-Herald]
Stick Dance III (1992) (back
to top)
"The recital of the Zanfonia trio was technically impressive. Andrew Schultz's Stick Dance III was an enjoyable and humourous adventure in 'tribal' dissonance and rhythm."
[Edward Dudley Hughes, "Performance Reviews, March 1993," The Musical Times, Vol 134, No 1801, p.163]
The Devil’s Music: Contrafactum II (1993) (back
to top)
“This is really a 22-minute concerto for orchestra, in a colouristic
rather than formal sense. It spares no orchestral expense…But it
is courageous, exuberant, instrumentally knowledgeable. For its composer
it must be a major milestone.” [Fred Blanks, SMH]
Chorale, Demon, Beacon (1995) (back to top)
“Rich in striking ideas” [Peter McCallum, SMH]
Diver’s Lament (1996) (back to top)
It “begins with flamboyant polyphony for brass, eventually the timbre
changes abruptly to the distant tintinnabulations of Chinese temple gongs.
. . Its conclusion is as hushed as the opening is swaggering…I’d
certainly welcome hearing it again.” [John Carmody, Sun Herald]
12 Variations (1997) (back to top)
“The expression marking which opens Australian composer Andrew Schultz'
12 Variations is borrowed from Beethoven's Op. 109. Mr Schultz translates
it as "Song-like, with inner feeling." 12 Variations is atmospheric,
expressive, and personal. Its demand for the exploration of sonorous and
expansive piano textures is fully suited to the ambience and palette of Mr Emmerson's and Mr Lanskey's partnership. Their
performance of this perpetuum mobile of piano texture is one that is commanding,
sensitive, hypnotic, and remarkable for its range of textural sonority.
And there is an additional accomplishment that must not be underestimated. On learning that Mr Schultz' writing entails
the interweaving of the duettists' hands, this is a performance I appreciated
immensely. Now I'd like to see it as well." [Sarah Grunstein, "The
Inner Line", MCA Music Forum 8/2, December-January 2002, 40-41.]
Data es Lux (1997) (back to top)
“I call Andrew Schultz's Data es Lux (Light is given) mother-rejecting
for the way its text kept cycling back on the misfortune of being born.
For me the most interesting choral textures came in the final piece where
Schultz indulged his skill for acerbic harmony which spreads over the
texture like a growing halting awareness.” [Peter McCallum, SMH]
Winter Ground (1997) (back to top)
"Andrew Schultz's Winter Ground for solo vibraphone filled the hall with its icy harmonies."
[Harriet Cunningham, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/8/2005]
"Schultz's Winter Ground (12’05”) for solo vibraphone is palpably reflective, establishing an ambiguous emotional state and working it over and over, winding and entwining, growing denser by accrual, expanding from a narrow note range into a stream of consciousness reverie with just enough of a rhythmic anchor to keep the work sensually engaging, often quite beautiful, right to the final residue of the repeated ringing of a single note. Something has been completed.”
[RealTime Arts Magazine, October-November 2007]
“With Andrew Schultz’ Winter Ground we return to the vibraphone, this time with more of an ethereal, sustained feel. Schultz actually uses the vibrato function of the instrument, which is quite refreshing to hear, and the piece is far from being vaguely atmospheric, with a set of variations exploring timbre and contrapuntal technique in some depth.”
[Dominy Clements, Music Web International, 2007]
In Tempore Stellae (1998) (back to top)
"In tempore stellae uses a wide range of texts ranging from the Bible to modern poetry, to portray chaos and creation, human sensuality and the exhilaration of flight.
Schultz agrees that by composing a symphony for voices, he is, to some extent, following the precedent Mahler set with his 8th Symphony and The Song of the Earth. Like Mahler, he has drawn on texts with personal resonance. The theme - our relation to the stars - is profoundly philosophical. But while he has set texts that speak of God, Schultz insists the work is humanist, not religious. The son of a clergyman, he maintains his own attitude to religion is "far too complicated to describe".
Although not yet 40, the Adelaide-born composer's prolific and widely acclaimed output has earned him his current position as Head of Music Studies and Composition at London's Guildhall School of Music. Since 1978 he has written chamber works, orchestral and instrumental miniatures, a concerto, and the prize-winning opera Black River, later filmed. All this, and yet In tempore stellae is his first symphony.
"I've waited to do it in a way that said something to me; it needed to be on a substantial scale so as to deal with some humanist-philosophical elements," he says, adding that he has several pieces which "might have turned into a symphony", but never truly satisfied his need.
The perfect moment came in 1995, when Schultz received a commission for a large-scale choral and orchestral work from the Melbourne Chorale with the backing of Arts Victoria. At first, he says, he planned to base the whole work on sensuous Asian poetry. But when Peter Greenaway's film, The Pillow Book was released in 1996, he returned to an idea that had taken root 10 years earlier when he saw the aviators' war memorial in York Minster.
The memorial was an astronomical clock. The otherness of "time outside the normal way we measure things", of man's struggle to understand and explore the universe took hold, and finally flowered as a three-movement symphony.
The work opens with a percussive sound that represents the clacking of an airport arrivals and departures board. "This is both mechanical and intensely personal," he says, explaining that the signals are not only public announcements but also private messages to individuals flying from or about to meet somebody. The text is a real test for the sopranos; they must list the celestial bodies, using both scientific and popular names.
Each movement offers opportunities for powerful expression. Chaos into order in the first, elemental conquest in the third - "a joined imagery of the joy of flight mixed with the destruction of war" says Schultz.
In contrast to the opening and closing movements, the middle movement expresses some of the most sensual poetry in music since Richard Strauss's opera Salome. Seductive solo voices emerge from a miasma of choral murmurings. Sandwiched between two Japanese pillow book texts to an excerpt from one of David Malouf's love poems. Malouf's poetry, says Schultz, is the Australian connection in a more universal work.
The music is pervaded by a sense of wonder and insignificance inspired by a star-filled sky. Schultz laughs when I suggest this is a memory of Australia. "I think I've hardly seen the stars for 18 months since moving here," he says. He recalls growing up in a family required to move around Australia to follow his father's calling.
"The experience of being in the Northern Territory, watching the stars and even the satellites move across the sky was so extraordinary . stars seem so large when you're in the outback."
Many critics have noted that much of Schultz' writing has a power to communicate with the listener in an almost visceral sense. He had once said he clings to "the knowledge that music has the power to strike the listener dumb with terror or grief and open inner worlds of astounding beauty". Will we experience this today? He laughs. "I'm sure you will."
[Andrew Scott, The Sunday Age, 06/12/98]
“This is a large, three movement work for two sopranos, choir and
orchestra. The focus is a quasi-spiritual one, in as much as it is about
“the duality of the inspiring vastness of space and time, against
the frail but grim determination of human suffering.” . . . . There
was certainly to be found a vastness in the music, particularly in the
first two movements. It reminded me in scope of Arvo Part’s drawn-out
sense of atmospheric space. … highly effective orchestration and
the varying musical componenets for the soloists.” [Joel Crotty,
The Age, 8 December 1998]
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