Listening Shapes Repertoire Discovery
One of the strongest themes emerging from the AASR project is that singers and teachers discover repertoire in two key ways: through the written score, and through listening.
For many performers, hearing a song performed can open the door to repertoire they may never otherwise encounter. A recording offers insight into language, phrasing, atmosphere, interpretation, and possibility. It allows singers to imagine how a work might live in performance. However, many Australian songs remain difficult to discover, hear or source, despite their extraordinary quality and pedagogical value.
This is one of the reasons the AASR has aimed not only to catalogue scores, but also to connect works with existing recordings wherever possible. In some cases, such as Come Sleep of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, multiple recordings exist, allowing listeners to compare different artistic interpretations of the same work. In many other cases, however, there may only be a single recording available - and sometimes none at all. Where recordings do exist, we have tried to include as many professional examples as possible so listeners can experience the diversity of interpretation within Australian art song performance practice.
At the same time, part of the long-term vision of the AASR is to help fill these gaps and help bring this repertoire to wider audiences. Alongside the database itself, we are beginning to produce both ‘live-at-home’ recordings of works that have never been commercially recorded, connecting teachers, students and performers with this rich body of work.
In time, we hope this resource will continue to grow - not only as a catalogue of Australian art song, but as a living archive of the many performers who have brought this music to life here at home.