Songlines was commissioned by guitarist Timothy Walker and flautist Judith Hall, with the assistance of the Arts Council of Great Britain. Its point of origin was the late Bruce Chatwin's remarkable book The Songlines.  Chatwin died in 1989, and my piece is dedicated to his widow Elizabeth. I remain profoundly grateful to Mr Chatwin not only for his book but for his kind permission to borrow the idea of the Songlines, and to do what I can to translate them into my own musical language - impoverished though that may be by its disconnection from our common nomadic origins. I also thank his publishers Jonathan Cape for allowing me to quote from the book at the head of the score, and in the following paragraph of this note.

Australian aboriginal creation-myths tell of legendary totemic beings (the Ancestors) who had wandered over the continent in "the Dreamtime", singing the name of everything which crossed their path (birds, animals, plants, rocks and waterholes) - and, in so doing, singing the world into existence. The Songlines are the paths along which they walked, and are not only songs but direction-finders and a system of communication. An aboriginal 'on walkabout' is walking along his Songline, singing to himself the the names of everything he passes - not because he sees it, but because it is in the Song: it is the Song. So the Songlines map out for the aboriginal Australian not only his geographical territory, but his identity and his conceptual world. We see these as three distinct areas; he sees them as one indivisible whole: his Dreaming.

Musically, the Songlines are a powerful allegory: an infinite musical space, lacking any arbitrarily imposed hierarchy or order, is a frightening and potentially dangerous thing. Some kind of pathway or map is essential, if only for survival. My personal Songlines consist of a set of 30 pulses (pulse, too, is essential to survival) which is put through a series of time-changes, expanding and contracting in such a way that the two processes mirror each other . . .

1/1 : 6/5 : 3/2 : 5/3 : 2/1 : 5/2 : 3/1 : 5/1 : 6/1
1/1 : 5/6 : 2/3 : 3/5 : 1/2 : 2/5 : 1/3 : 1/5 : 1/6

This may appear coldly logical; but the traveller who sets out into unfamiliar country with approximate or inaccurate maps is liable to get into trouble. By scrambling the pulses freely, I have attempted to recreate the criss-crossing of these invisible pathways of song. They are defined at all times by the vast silences across which they so vulnerably tread.

Giles Swayne
2025