1. Prejjem *
2. “Inkantaw flimkien…” *
3. Last song (Frühling)

This set of three pieces for guitar duo is a personal homage to song in its many forms - folk, classical, sacred; instrumental and vocal; solo and shared. More specifically, it’s about singing as I’ve come to know it, through memory and recorded performance.

The first movement, Prejjem, is shaped by the short passages the lead guitarist (il-Prim) plays after each refrain in a Maltese folk guitar ensemble. My connection to this genre is mostly not first-hand - it comes from Sunday morning TV broadcasts I remember as a child, and from old, scratchy records from the interwar years. It’s song which stayed with me not just as music itself, but as an attitude and virtuosity as well as an impression through faded, at times dissonant recordings.

The second movement comes from Gaelic psalm singing. Hearing recordings of this for the first time, I was struck by the power of melody carried and stretched across a whole full-throated congregation. In my mind, it sits in sharp contrast with the quieter kind of communal singing I knew in Malta, where a single microphoned voice would lead (after announcing “Inkantaw flimkien” – “Let’s sing together”) and the rest of the congregation almost whispered along in the background, like shy teenagers.

The final piece takes its harmony from the first of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, but its pacing and shape owes much to Jessye Norman’s legendary recording, where the music seems to breathe and stretch time and harmony itself, drawing out every moment of beauty with soaring endless vocal lines.

Together, these three pieces form a set of impressions: reflections on the resonance and expressiveness found in other people’s voices - and recordings of them - almost more than in the music itself. The guitar felt like the natural instrument here, bound so much to both Maltese folk traditions and to children's church services of my childhood, where it was a constant (at times overzealous) companion to song.

This work was commissioned by and written for Miyabi Duo, whose musicianship and generosity helped shape the piece and bring the ideas within it to life.

*Ghanjiet (the Maltese word for “songs,” though more poetic in nature; it is usually used for folk tunes or hymns rather than modern pop or radio songs) is pronounced roughly like an-yiet in English. Inkantaw flimkien is pronounced in-can’t-tau flim-keen. Prejjem is pronounced prey-yem.