What happens in a concert hall designed for the performance of European art music when the lights are turned low and the music is mostly very quiet and still, with no feeling of movement towards climaxes or, indeed, of going anywhere in particular?

In composing Yarrageh I explored some of the possibilities of this ‘nocturnal’ mode of listening which is far less concerned with keeping track of a sequence of musical events in time in order to perceive an overall structural unity than with responding intuitively to the uniqueness and mysteriousness of each passing moment.

This way of listening, much neglected in Western music of the past five hundred years, is standard practice within a variety of Oriental musical traditions, particularly those whose specific function is to enhance the contemplative faculties of the human mind. The music employed within these traditions ranges in style from the quiet intensity of the 18th century Kinko meditational pieces composed for the Japanese shakuhachi (a bamboo flute) to the clamorous rituals of Islamic mysticism, whose driving, hypnotic rhythms can send devotees into a state of trance.

One thing these differing musical styles have in common is that they all seek to reveal to the listener the ‘mysterious darkness’ that underlies our ordinary consciousness. To do this it’s necessary to ‘turn off’ the everyday world for a time by focussing attention and reducing distraction. This can be achieved by treating the music as a sort of contemplation object in which each single event is as important as every other: you don’t have to think about where it’s going or what kind of structure is being outlined – the present moment, ideally, should capture your full attention.

I’ve applied similar techniques in writing this piece. I’ve avoided too much complexity and restricted myself to using just a few ideas, or motifs, which I thought were powerful enough to stand on their own and bear a considerable amount of repetition. The way in which these ideas have been distributed and combined is based on a method I’ve evolved over the years which is influenced by the sounds of the natural environment. The complex interplay of insect and bird sounds has been distilled to form patterns which, for me, recall their origin without being too specific: I certainly wouldn’t want to undermine their fundamental mysteriousness by making them easy to identify.

I suppose, then, it’s reasonable to say that this work, along with much of my other music, represents an attempt to localise some esoteric oriental musical traditions. Much of Yarrageh was conceived as I walked through the Australian bush in early Spring. The title is an Aboriginal word which means ‘the spirit of Spring’. Of course, the burgeoning of renewed life helped produce the impulse to compose but I was also intensely aware at the time – and during the following months spent working on the score – of the fragility and vulnerability of the landscape.

Yarrageh was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and was composed especially for the percussionist Ian Cleworth, one of our finest musicians, whose collaboration I found very valuable in writing the solo part.