The Australian Art Song Resource – An Exciting New Collection

Two experienced singing colleagues have created a collection of Australian Art Song that is a tool for teachers, performers and students as well as a history of Australian Art Song.

It’s been a labour of love for Jenny Duck–Chong and Nicole Thomson. The two singers, Duck-Chong, a mezzo-soprano and Thomson a soprano, both performers, teachers and polymaths in the field of Australian vocal music, realised that the seemingly simple task of finding suitable Australian songs for students and performers was fraught with obstacles.

Finding a song in the right key, with the right level of difficulty and range, score availability, character suitability and voice part, proved to be a laborious task, and so the long-term collaborators set about planning a single-stop resource to help voice teachers more easily find Australian Art Song repertoire.

And so, the Australian Art Song Resource (AASR) comprising songs currently taught in teaching studios, was launched in April 2026. For now, it contains information on the voice category, range, availability of score and audio recording, and period of composition, of 77 songs by 29 Australian composers, spanning over a century.

Duck-Chong is in the refreshing chill of southern Tasmania, near the mouth of the Huon River which she describes an “inspirational moving landscape.”

Finding a definition of an Australian Art Song was a re-requisite to gathering the data. Duck-Chong admits that a lot of time was spent in carefully forming this definition. Ultimately, it is  “An Australian Art Song written by an Australian Art Music Composer, utilising Western classical techniques and language.”  It is composed primarily for voice and piano. Songs that are drawn from larger staged works, like operas or musicals, or choral works, though currently being taught and sung, are beyond the scope of this project.”

“We all knew we needed a research tool, and teachers were desperately looking for one” continues Duck-Chong. “They didn’t know where to start and how to find what they needed. A teacher might have 30 minutes to pick 12 songs for half a dozen students, so they need an efficient and accurate process. The more pertinent information we can give them, the better placed they are to choose something suitable and the more likely they are to choose Australian repertoire because it’s now not impossible to find.”

Fully self-funded, Duck-Chong and Thomson reached out to singing teachers through their own network of colleagues as well as through ANATS, the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing. They constructed two Stage 1 surveys probing what songs were being taught, the obstacles faced by teachers, current sources and what information was needed to pick a song that best suited the requirements of the singer.

“What I loved was that it validated a lot of conversations that we’d had with teachers about their difficulties and the underlying reasons. These were not isolated and it gave us the impetus to make things easier” says Duck-Chong.

Part of that drive came from the singers’ personal experience of performing and teaching Australian music and commissioning Australian composers. “There is great Australian music out there that many teachers don’t get exposure to in the way that we have. Teachers go to British and American songs and other English language songs but not to ones that talk about our place, our seasons, our flora and fauna. Even the language itself – we want to speak our rich vernacular. Contemporary Art Song anthologies contain so few Australian songs. We don’t have great anthologies that speak to the best of the country’s song repertoire.” Duck-Chong is gratified by the observation that themes and texts are changing. More Australian poems are being set to music, talking about this place and this environment. More students are seeking a language and ideas that are not foreign or archaic, and which resonate more closely with their identity.

A living legacy, the database is dynamic and Stage 2, will contain additional song selections and further teaching and learning materials for singing teachers and students.  New listings will be added to this resource along with their search criteria and resource links. This stage will also seek to address the dearth of recordings of Australian works, creating new recordings and live presentations.

The anthology is effectively a history of Australian Art Song and threw up some fascinating information. For building the whizz-bang and responsive database, Duck-Chong gives a nod to her daughter Liz Duck-Chong as the “third arm” of the enterprise. The earliest song in the collection dates from 1919, Flutes of Arcady by William G James; the most recent is by Benjamin Loomes’ The Feather, from 2022. The most frequently taught song was Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Come Sleep (1938), a composer who has left an indelible impression on the Australian musical landscape.

The vast majority of songs, 76%, were taught by only individual teachers. The third most frequently taught song was statistically tied between five living composers – Elena Kats-Chernin, Carl Vine, George Palmer, Sally Whitwell and Calvin Bowman. The position of most frequently taught composer was again shared by five composers – Calvin Bowman, Dorian Le Galliene, Benjamin Loomes, Margaret Sutherland and Alan Tregaskis.”

Duck-Chong and Thomson, along with pianist Josephine Allan have formed Flametree, an ensemble committed to presenting recitals in intimate settings. The trio has begun to include songs from the AASR in their recitals. Flametree’s performances and recordings will be a part of this resource promises Duck-Chong. “People have started teaching songs from the AASR, so already our performances are having an impact. Flametree is a place for us to perform and engage with people but it’s also something that we see as a practical way of feeding material back into this resource.”

Duck-Chong has extensive experience in a commissioning and performing songs, collaborating with composers, and encouraging excellence in vocal composition, adding to the growing canon of bespoke Australian Art Song. “A collection like this shows how you can talk to composers about writing for voice. What I think Australian Art Song lacks is the “brave” end of contemporary composition for singers with excellent pitch, excellent rhythm and excellent independence from the piano part. You have to be a solid musician to feel comfortable sitting in those dissonances or riding across the wave of music.”

“We want there to be singers in the world who are thriving at that end of composition and unless they are exposed to that through our studios, no one will even contemplate it because they don’t know that it exists.”

“Not everyone thinks it’s fun and most of the collection is lyrical and warm and that’s what we would expect coming out of teaching studios because you have to lead people to the experience and you don’t start that by throwing them in the deep end. You actually play with what song can be, what song is and who you are as a singer.” The Australian Art Song Resource intends to be beacon to singers on this journey.

Shamistha de Soysa for SoundsLikeSydney©