Composers and Authors
13 Ways of Looking at a Butcherbird
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$20.00
13 short pieces for solo piano. Level of difficulty - 5th grade.
Each movement is based melodically on transcribed butcherbird calls. Most pieces are transcribed from recordings in various locations around NSW and Queensland. The approach to the harmonic accompaniment to these movements varies according to the intervallic implications of the tunes.
Composed 2005.
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ISMN 9790720133423$15.00 for instant PDF download see:
17 Haiku
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Solo piano
The composer has interpreted the strict limitations of syllable numbers of the Japanese poetic haiku form in the realisation of their haiku-inspired works. Composed 2008.
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ISMN 9790720140599
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Ancient Cedar Trees
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Solo trumpet in Bb, c.3'20. Grade LMus
The pitch material is based upon a series of related chords, each of which involves a common low F sharp and the D which is a minor thirteenth above. The melodic style is very angular with intervals such as sixths, sevenths and ninths being prominent. Recorded on Improvisations and Comprovisationswith Scott Tinker (trumpet), Wirr 051 available online.
Composed 2002
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ISMN 9790720133539
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Australia - East and West - CD
By Blom, Bennett
Regular price
$25.00
New music for viola and piano by Australian Composers
Dawn Bennett, viola and Diana Blom, piano
When two musicians undertake research into the music they perform, thoughts will inevitably turn to a creative research project in which they can put this focus into practice. Australia East and West sought to foster national and international interest in contemporary classical music written by Australian composers through new music for viola and piano.
The project was devised by composer and pianist Diana Blom and violist Dawn Bennett, who commissioned, performed, recorded and researched a program of new works for viola and piano by Australian composers – Alice Humphries, Michael Hannan, John Encarnacao, Nicole Murphy, Cat Hope, Diana Blom, Lisa Cheney, and Clare Maclean.
The project resulted in nine new works which connected to the project title through their exploration of aural, cultural and creative notions of Eastern and Western Australia. Diana lives in Sydney and Dawn in Perth, so the two sides of the large Australian continent were in our minds, and we had associations with composers on each coast.
Wirr 101
[1] Surface - Nicole Murphy
[2] Fear - Alice Humphries
[3] Majesty - Alice Humphries
[4] Waltzing with Elling - Diana Blom
[5] In the Sea Paths - Clare Maclean
Tarantula Variations - John Encarnacao
[6] Variation I
[7] Variation II
[8] Variation III
[9] Variation IV
[10] Into the Sun - Diana Blom
[11] Echo Tango - Michael Hannan
[12] The Sinister Glamour of Modernity (after Ross Gibson) - Cat Hope
[13] Fragile - Lisa Cheney
Birds Calling in Cloud Valley
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Solo piano, c.5'30. Grade 6
Inspired by the Chinese poem of the same title and employed transcriptions of the calls of four birds found in China. Composed 2010
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ISMN 9790720133515
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Birds Calling in Fortitude Valley
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Solo piano. Grade 4
The Pied Butcherbirds calls transcribed heard in the early hours of the morning in Brisbane. Composed 2011
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ISMN 9790720146201
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Birds Calling on Harrigans Lane
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Piano solo, c.6'00.
Composed 2021
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ISMN 9790673140288
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Birds Calling on Waterfall Way
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Piano solo. Grade 6
The pied butcherbird and magpie lark (peewee) calls captured my attention and inspired this work. Birds Calling on Waterfall Way is in three main sections. The first and last employ the haunting melodies of the pied butcherbird, a bird that has found its way into many of my piano works beginning with Resonances I (1987). The middle section explores the rhythmic variety of the calls of the magpie lark. Composed 2015
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ISMN 9790720167961
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Birdsong Rhapsody I
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$18.00
Solo Clarinet in Bb
Birdsong Rhapsody I is in four clearly-defined sections, the first and third of which principally use birdsong transcriptions as the compositional material. The second and fourth movements, by contrast, enact "rhapsodic" treatments of the motivic ideas contained in the transcribed birdsong melodies. Composed 2014
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ISMN 9790720209180
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Birdsong Rhapsody II
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$15.00
Solo flute, c.7'40. Grade 8
Birdsong Rhapsody II is in seven texturally differentiated sections. The second and the fourth of these are transcriptions of the songs of the Pied Butcherbird recorded in South-East Queensland. All the other sections represent variations of melodic ideas found in these transcriptions. Sections 1, 5 and 7, although derived from the Pied Butcherbird's songs, are influenced by decorative elements in traditional Japanese shakuhachi (end-blown bamboo flute) music.
Composed 2022
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ISMN 9790673143609
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Bracefell's Story
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$28.00
Baritone and piano, c.17'00
Bracefell represents an early example of a white person who has come to terms with aboriginal life, and has received wisdom about the land. The musical treatment contrasts the oppressive violence of his life in the penal colony (section I) with the freedom of his tribal existence (section II). The third section of the work depicts the chaos resulting from the white intruders from the shipwreck and rescue of Eliza Frazer. Their failure to conform to aboriginal ways in turn leads to their deaths or degradation.
Composed 1990
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ISMN 9790720151526
$25.00 for instant PDF download see:
Callisto: Music for Fairlight CMI
By Michael Hannan
Regular price
$25.00
Michael Hannan The CD Callisto features works composed for the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (CMI) which is the world's first digital music sampler, a product of the late 1970s. The recording also provides some documentation of a phase of Michael Hannan’s development as a composer, during which he was an insider of a ground breaking project generated by the CMI at that time, being 1984.
Each work conveys images that draw one away to other worlds, in the case of Callisto (the largest moon of Jupiter) to a sound analysis of laughter, a series of studies, a sonata written in the style of Conlon Nancarrow, through the inspiration generated by animal calls, a tribute to Slonimsky, finally and intriguingly an attempt to stimulate the conditions by which a thought trance is induced.
Wirr 079
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1. Callisto
2. Laughing Piece
3. Study #1.1
4. Study #1.2
5. Study #1.3
6. Sonata After Nancarrow
7. Animal Minimal
8. Slonimsky Variations
9. Alphabeat
