# Didgeridoo Meets Orchestra



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Now this is really something else...


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry, I assume?

I don't know of any other "didgeridoo concertos"......


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

Yeah that's Earth Cry with William Barton, a Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga elder and contemporary didjeridu player.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Robert Pickett said:


> Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry, I assume?
> 
> I don't know of any other "didgeridoo concertos"......


Sean O'Boyle composed a real concerto for the instrument. It's interesting, but I prefer Sculthorpe's concertante work.


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

Matthew Hindson wrote a work for William Barton and an orchestra called _Kalkadungu_


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

Philip Glass had a go as well of course:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Did...d=1539341667&sr=8-3&keywords=Glass+didgeridoo

Many years ago there was a didgeridoo busker in Sheffield city centre. Not unpleasant.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I wonder how on earth you notate didgeridoo music...



LezLee said:


> Philip Glass had a go as well of course:
> 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Did...d=1539341667&sr=8-3&keywords=Glass+didgeridoo
> 
> Many years ago there was a didgeridoo busker in Sheffield city centre. Not unpleasant.


I very much like the sound of the didgeridoo. I tend to be old-fashioned in my tastes and thus I mostly prefer music with a good tune. But if we're going to do soundscapes, there is hardly an instrument better suited to it than didgeridoo, in my ever so humble opinion.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

brianvds said:


> I wonder how on earth you notate didgeridoo music...


on the score there's the indication: "blow!"


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Peter Sculthorpe met William Barton after composing pieces like Earth Cry, but adding the didgeridoo was an entirely logical outcome. As far back as the 1960's, Sculthorpe was incorporating drones into his music. He said that drones had a direct parallel with the flatness of the Australian landscape, as well as the sounds of nature. At that time, Aboriginal culture and language was not valued by the white majority. It was judged to be primitive, something destined to die out in the face of progress.

Sculthorpe heard archival recordings of tribal music, and Djilile is a piece which directly quotes a song from Northern Australia. On the whole, like Bartok, Sculthorpe tended to absorb characteristics of the music into his own rather than quote it. Sculthorpe also had an interest in music of Indonesia and Japan, extensively travelling in these countries, and he programmed and taught the first course in Australia to cover non-Western (chiefly Asian) music.

There's an anecdote in Sculthorpe's autobiography which relates to all this. An orchestra visited a remote area of the Northern Territory and performed Kakadu amongst other things. After the concert, the local Aboriginal people where most complimentary about Sculthorpe's piece, saying that in it he captured the spirit of their music perfectly. They had not heard an orchestra perform before, and Sculthorpe thought this to be the highest praise he could receive.


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