“To be human” program note
Ian Munro was born in Melbourne and attended Scotch College and the Victorian College of the Arts, before undertaking further training in Vienna, London, and Italy. Munro won second prize at the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition, establishing his international profile, and has performed at over 30 countries around the world. As a composer, he has written orchestral, choral, instrumental and chamber works, his piano trio works available on Australian Music Centre including two multi-movement piano trios and Walzer-Schottische. The birth of his first daughter in the early 1990s sparked an ongoing interest in creating music for children.
Ian Munro composed A book of lullabies in 2013, initiated by writing of Lullaby in Edo in response to the birth of a friend’s son. Munro states that ‘From this small beginning, I kept collecting folk tunes from around the world and did not stop until I had circumnavigated the globe in music, as it were. It is a simple work, celebrating the joy and mystery of simple melodies of different peoples, fashioned over time by communal singing and story telling, and expressing much that we all share of the pain and happiness of being human.’
Maranoa Lullaby is a traditional lullaby of the Gunggari First Nations people, from the Darling Downs in Queensland. The melody and words were documented by Harold Lethbridge (1880-1944) and set to piano accompaniment by English-born composer Arthur Loam (1892-1976) in 1937. Maranoa Lullaby was made famous by First Nations tenor Harold Blair (1924-1976), and has found renewed popularity amongst members of the Gunggari community such as Ethel Munn. The melody has been employed by various Australian composers in the late 20th and early 21st century, including Peter Sculthorpe, sparking debate regarding what consists of appropriation of First Nations culture. Here Maranoa Lullaby is presented in the spirit of celebration and homage. Munro’s exploration of Maranoa Lullaby uses joyful, light pentatonic harmonies and delicate contrapuntal interplay. After the climax, fragments of diatonic textures from the opening movement, Nina Bobok, return, according to Munro, ‘suggestive of the wishful notion that in music it might be more possible than not to understand each other and find a natural and common humanity in song.’
Ian Munro
Photo credit: Patrick Boland, 2011