Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

The Australian Flute Festival of 2025 carries the intriguing theme "Across the Generations." In response, I wanted to compose a solo piece that reflects on the passage of time, and the memories and dreams that frame the present. Aeons is in three sections. In "The Cry of Before" a series of breaths emerge from the quiet, increasing in register, activity and intensity, like memories and heritage calling from the past. "The Song of Now" is a naive and meditative melody that becomes increasingly decorated as it progresses moment to moment. The final section, "The Dance of After," flowers into an energetic and hypnotic ostinato. The music here has a quality of anticipation of that which has not yet arrived. As with our authentic experience of time, some of the musical motifs interweave between present, past and future. Through all the sections the flautist's breath is at the forefront, in individual musical gestures and on a broader scale in the ways that each section expands and contracts.

Work Details

Year: 2025

Instrumentation: Flute.

Duration: 5 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Commissioned as a set piece for finalists of the 2025 Australian International Flute Competition (Australian Flute Festival)