Guitars Softly Playing 

Guitars Softly Playing - composed by Duncan Gardiner in 2020.
Performed by the Classical Guitar Society of Western Australia, Guitar Society Orchestra in July 2021.
Guitars Softly Playing is a new work commissioned by the Classical Guitar Society of Western Australia (CGSWA) to commemorate its 60th anniversary. The work was composed especially for the Guitar Society Orchestra. The work is dedicated to Lorna Prendiville; she established the society, and it is because of her initial interest in the classical guitar that the CGSWA has been promoting the beauty of our beloved instrument to guitar enthusiasts ever since. The work is inspired by a range of elements, particularly some insights gleaned from historical news sources as well as some anecdotal evidence and some personal reflections. I became interested in doing some further research about Lorna and her life. I found a number of news articles and reviews concerning her art practices and I learned that she was quite an established artist. The piece is heavily influenced by some of the descriptions of her artworks as revealed in the historical press. Guitars Softly Playing was the title of a feature article that was published in The Australian Women’s Weekly on 25 January, 1961. The article chronicles the CGSWA’s first summer school, which was directed by the renowned guitarist, Sadie Bishop. The reporter for the magazine said “the Western Australian Society was incorporated in September, 1959, started by Mrs. Lorna Prendiville, a well-known Perth artist,” adding that the summer school was the first of its kind in Australia. Held on Rottnest Island, the reporter said that the students ate picnic meals to the accompaniment of their own guitars and that they also danced to Spanish folk tunes on the beach.
The first movement of the work, titled Crusader (Study of Spanish gentlemen), takes particular inspiration from Sadie Bishop-who was described as a crusader of the classical guitar-as well as Andrés Segovia. Segovia, being an internationally renowned figure, was a huge driving force behind the interest in the classical guitar in Australia. Many local guitarists emulated Segovia by playing the sorts of repertoire that he championed, which included music by composers such as Federico Moreno Torroba, Manuel de Falla, and Isaac Albéniz, plus many others, so I decided to include some short quotations of well-known pieces by Spanish composers in the first movement.
The second movement is a song-a lullaby-titled Faceless Portrait (Portrait of a broken dream), and it is dedicated to Susan Prendiville. It is inspired by the dreams of all young musicians and the aspirations that their parents have for them. The piece, however, also evokes loss, grief, and broken dreams. Thus, the piece is, perhaps, a portrait of a gifted child who dreamed of making it as an accomplished musician, but who buckled under the overwhelming pressure, the constant uncertainty, and the harsh criticism that comes with being in the public eye. Faceless Portrait includes a musical quotation of El sueño de la muñequita (The Sleep of the Little Doll) by Agustín Barrios Mangoré.
The Relations Between Light alludes to a review of one of Lorna Prendiville’s art exhibitions in 1950. A reviewer for the West Australian said “her style… is more emotional than intellectual. One imagines her delight in such experiences as seeing a streak of light on the distant sea under a sullen sky, the rainbow in front of a dark hill and gleaming water, the glow of autumn foliage above a green lawn, or the wreaths of smoke and steam enveloping a train on a dewy morning.” This poetic description of her work made me feel a very strong connection to Lorna and her work. Lorna was renowned as a portrait painter, but she once commented that “WA is the State of landscapes.” The movement, therefore, attempts to convey an imagined landscape through sound; so it is fashioned into a soundscape. Reviews stated that Lorna’s landscape work possessed an “elimination of detail and a breadth of brushwork” and also explored “the use of black and white… [and] extremes in the tonal scale,” so I have attempted to convey these ideas musically.