Instrumental Series: Art of Composing with Ralph Hultgren | 128

Welcome to this special episode of the podcast, where we’re thrilled to have the legendary Ralph Hultgren as our guest!

Ralph is a celebrated composer, conductor, and educator whose music has inspired musicians around the globe. In this episode, we’ll dive into his incredible journey—from his early days discovering his passion for music to becoming one of the most respected composers in the industry.

Ralph will also give us a behind-the-scenes look at his composition process. How does he bring a piece of music to life? What inspires his work? And what advice does he have for aspiring composers and educators? Whether you’re a music lover, teacher, or creator, this episode is packed with insights and stories that will leave you inspired. Let’s get started! 🎶

Biography of Ralph Hultgren:
Ralph Hultgren, born in Box Hill, Victoria, Australia, is a distinguished freelance teacher, composer, and conductor currently residing in Newmarket, Queensland. He began his professional music career in 1970 as a trumpet player with the Central Band of the Royal Australian Air Force. Dr. Hultgren has made significant contributions to music education and has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including being named a Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2016. He is the Patron of the Maryborough Music Conference and has received the Midwest Clinic International Award for his global contributions to music education. Ralf received the Citation of Excellence from the Australian Band and Orchestra Directors’ Association, as well as life membership of ABODA.

Dr. Hultgren’s extensive academic career includes serving as Head of Open Conservatorium at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, where he lectured in conducting and instrumental music education and conducted the Queensland Conservatorium Wind Orchestra. He has also performed with notable ensembles like the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Brass Choir. While composing and conducting are his primary focuses today, teaching remains his greatest passion. Outside of music, he enjoys reading, listening to various genres, and leading a men’s group at his church, cherishing time with his family.

Links Mentioned in this Episode:
🎶 Together Sing
🎙️ Together Sing Podcast Ep 72
🎶 Dr Hultgren’s PHD

Where to find me: 

Crescendo Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crescendocommunity
Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrescendoMusicEd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crescendomusic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-o-shea-62a3741b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CrescendoDeb

Introduction

Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 128.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

If you’d prefer to listen to this episode, click here!

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 128 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

---

Debbie O’Shea 

I would like to welcome to the Crescendo Music Education Podcast, Ralph Hultgren. Hello Ralph.

Ralph Hultgren 

Hi Debbie. How are you? Lovely to be here.

Ralph’s Biography

Debbie O’Shea 

It is so great to have you on and to chat about instrumental music and the intersection between instrumental music and classroom music. But before we get going, I’m going to read just a summary of your biography, because it’s quite a lengthy bio. So have a careful listen and you can jump in at the end and tell me if there is anything that I missed out. Alright. Ralph Hultgren born in Box Hill, Victoria, Australia, is a distinguished freelance teacher, composer and conductor currently residing in Newmarket, Queensland.

He began his professional music career in 1970 as a trumpet player with the central band of the Royal Australian Air Force. Dr Hultgren has made significant contributions to music education and has been recognised with several prestigious awards, including being named a member of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2016. He is the patron of the Maryborough Music Conference and has received The Midwest Clinic International Award for his global contributions to music education. Ralph received the citation of excellence from the Australian Band and Orchestra Directors Association, as well as life membership of ABODA.

Dr Hultgren’s extensive academic career includes serving as Head of Open Conservatorium at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, where he lectured in conducting and instrumental music education and conducted the Queensland Conservatorium Wind Orchestra. He has also performed with notable ensembles like the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Brass Choir. While composing and conducting are his primary focuses today, teaching remains his great passion. Outside of music, he enjoys reading, listening to various genres, leading a men’s group at his church and cherishing time with his family.

Ralph Hultgren 

That sounds better than I’ve ever composed myself. Thank you.

Debbie O’Shea 

Alright, well, there’s so many things in there, but is there anything that just listening to that you just want to add to that summary?

Ralph Hultgren 

I think the thing that stands out to me as I’ve grown through my career over all those decades, is how important teaching has become to me. I mean, what a great privilege to conduct fine ensembles, what a great joy to have your music premiered all around the world. But there’s nothing like being in a situation and it could be on the podium conducting in a rehearsal, where you see the light come on over a person’s head and you go, wow, whether that’s a 6 year old or a 60 year old in a community ensemble.

I mean, it’s just the most amazing thing. And to think that that light came on because of something you’ve said, because at some stage somebody said something to you and the light bulb went on over your head. So teaching is such a special privilege and it’s something that we need to guard very carefully, I think.

Ups and Downs

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, of course, I’m going to agree with that. But I also feel it’s quite sad that teaching, generally in our society, isn’t quite as respected as it should be, because it is a magical job. It’s a difficult job. But like you said, when that light bulb goes off, it’s amazing. I just wish that people who haven’t experienced that joy of teaching and the importance. I just wish they knew how important it was.

Ralph Hultgren 

Well, yeah, but I think Debbie, one of the great sadnesses isn’t that the society doesn’t realise it. I think there are many people in the profession who have never experienced the joy that you and I are talking about now. That’s sad and I think it’s because they’ve gone off to do things together, do musical things or whatever teaching they do, they’ve gone off to do that without a consideration of the fact that good teaching becomes joyful because those taught are at the forefront of what the teaching is about. I mean, obviously you have to know your stuff. You’ve got to have some great regard and affection for those who you’re trying to impart that stuff to. I think that’s important. A lot of people don’t do that. They don’t have that.

Debbie O’Shea 

I would agree with that too and I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations here but I think, especially if we’re talking about instrumental teachers, I think that if you lose sight of the fact you’re teaching the child, you’re not just teaching an instrument, or you’re not teaching the notes on the page to that child so that their instrument makes the right sound. That’s, of course, part of it. Like you said, that’s your job. But if you lose sight of the fact that you’re actually teaching the child, to me the excellent teachers are the ones that know their craft. Of course, you can’t be an excellent clarinet teacher if you don’t know how to teach that instrument well and have your pedagogy, obviously, but it’s the one that is able to reach the child or the adult.

Ralph Hultgren 

That’s right. I’ve been very fortunate across a very long career, to be able to teach across all age levels and in all educational environments, whether that’s primary school, high school, university or professional development. And that’s been one of the joys of my life, is to work with those who’ve come to raise their skills, being at the chalk face with the kids and everything, and saying, Actually, I don’t know how to do this. I think this is right and I think I do that well, but that needs to be polished up a little bit and they come and they grow in a professional development week or two. And that’s a joy. It’s really good.

Debbie O’Shea 

I understand and I love that myself. It’s why I love working with other music teachers. The same thing, same reason. Now, looking at this great journey that you’ve had as a music educator, what would you consider the highlights? Highlight or highlights? You can have several. I’ll let you have several.

Ralph’s Education Highlights

Ralph Hultgren 

Wow. I can tell some amazing stories, but I think the thing for me, obviously the further along the journey, the more things you can look at. I guess a summary of this would be the Maryborough Music Conference and you having been there many, many times, you know what it’s like.

But it was Bruce Pearson doing a keynote address and he said, what you need to do is realise you’re here doing those light bulb moments for young people, because somebody had the temerity to produce a light bulb moment for you and what you need do is go and thank them. That evening was the conference dinner and after dinner, I had this wonderful experience of having a line of people at my table coming up to thank me.

But the best part about it was that line of people came up and thank me and then they’d stand to the side and they would thank the person in that line. That was a light bulb moment for them in school. So I’d been the light bulb moment for them teaching them at university to go and be a band or orchestra teacher. But there was their high school teacher or their primary school teacher in that line too. So it was like Christmas with the grumpy old uncle. It was just wonderful.

Debbie O’Shea 

What a physical demonstration of the ripples that you’ve made that most of us don’t get to see.

Ralph Hultgren 

Well, yes and I just think, wow. I mean, I thought when I stopped teaching school that my relevance would disappear, because you’re working with kids every day and in a university environment, you work with them in two semesters of 13 weeks. There’s not always the greatest commitment to what’s being done, whereas band and orchestra in school is a voluntary thing and coming to class at University is a compulsory thing. So that you think, Oh, well, it’s not the same sort of thing. One of your instrumental teachers you work with, Carmen, we met recently and she and I met for coffee, for tea actually, East India Earl Grey.

We sat down and we chatted about all sorts of things and she did that memory lane thing and I was in that memory lane somewhere, but it was all those other things and now she’s speaking with joy of those moments where she’s helping change lives. And we do, music teachers change lives. I would be so bold as to suggest there’s not many people who would tell the story of the maths teacher who changed their life. But there would be so many who would talk about the arts teacher of some sort and particularly the music teacher. And we would say that because it’s subjective, and now our domain is music and music education. But there are so many that that would be touched by an arts teacher of some sort, because it allows us to touch into ourselves.

I mean, Honegger, the Swiss composer, said to place black dots on white paper was a gentle form of madness, about composing. Wagner said that music allows us to gaze into our innermost self. Now, I think, as a composer as I put black dots on white paper, what sort of madness am I finding as I gaze into my inner self? Those young souls in our charge to experience that to some extent, to be enlightened to some extent, to be empowered to some extent, to be engaged. They’re in the flow and they’re going, wow. They finish rehearsal and then they go out and they go, Well that was fantastic and they try to explain to the kid next to them in maths class what just happened. And the kid goes, Oh, yeah.

Gratitude and Perception

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, you’ve got to be in it. Because gratitude is something else that I should mention too and it sounds to me like you’re grateful for those interactions.

Ralph Hultgren 

Oh yes, yes.  I think if I could summarise it as the fact that, like that experience after Pearson suggested you should give thanks to somebody, I think one of the greatest problems in teaching today is that that the world has an expectation of what it should have, not an expectation to give thanks for what it’s received. Do you know what I mean? We don’t give thanks for what we’ve received.

We have an expectation. That’s why, that the teacher of today has more chance to be harangued and harassed by a parent for the child not receiving what the child should have received in the parents view, whereas the teacher has worked assiduously to prepare that lesson so the child will receive what the child should receive. Anyone I sound like I should have a pulpit in front of me now, but you know what I’m talking about.

Debbie O’Shea 

I think that’s a really perceptive look at sort of the way things are going now.

Ralph Hultgren 

It is a bit like that, isn’t it?

Debbie O’Shea 

It is and it makes our job even more important.

Ralph Hultgren 

Oh yes, yes, because we just have to get through this time Debbie, we just have to get through this time.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, what goes around comes around.

Ralph Hultgren 

Yes, that’s right. That’s right. And kids are still loving being in band and orchestra and choir. They’re still enjoying going to the lesson where they learn their instrument. I taught a class at the Con yesterday for the composition and general students on orchestration and arranging. And I said to them, don’t you realise that, because I’m talking about brass because that’s my original background and others have done wood wind and strings and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, Don’t you realise that the brass instrument is the same as the voice? I mean, the body produces the sound. If the body doesn’t work properly the sound is no good. So it’s a really personal thing. We talked about that and then we got onto that expressiveness of self, which composition is. So there’s another step where they’re able to tell their story of themselves without being, as the researchers say, solipsistic. You know that they’re not so engaged in themselves, as all about themselves, but it’s part of telling the story.

Sorry, I’m rambling now. I’ll go back and let you run the interview. But the thing is that what we’re doing is we’re allowing the child to speak for themselves but not necessarily expecting them to do the speech on assembly. The fact that they might stand up and sing in the choir is them speaking and if they’re playing a brass instrument, it’s definitely speaking. Because you hold the trumpet up and look at it like that. You think that’s not an instrument, that’s an amplifier. This is the instrument.

Music is Self-Expression

Debbie O’Shea 

That has made me think that one of the things that we often say is that one of the reasons we do music is for self expression, like that’s often quoted around, but that’s digging deeper into what that actually means.

Ralph Hultgren 

Yes, yes, it does. Yeah.

Debbie O’Shea 

It is actually an expression of yourself, even if you’re standing up there with 50 other children, you’re still expressing yourself, aren’t you?

Ralph Hultgren 

Yeah, yeah. But what’s wonderful about that experience is that they’re expressing themselves as a unit, so they’re joining their individuality to make a community. I sound like someone that should have a tie dye shirt on. Oh, sorry Deb.

Debbie O’Shea 

But look, I’m not wearing tie dye today, because I’ve got a pretty new dress.

Ralph Hultgren 

It’s lovely.

Debbie O’Shea 

It’s close enough to tie dye, isn’t it?

Ralph Hultgren 

Yeah, but you know what I mean, we have this sense of community, that sense of corporate activity. The Western world has become so individualistic that we’ve lost that sense of building together and doing together. There’s too much of tearing down. If I go back all those moments ago, when we talk talked about music education and instrumental, especially primary music education and instrumental music education, primary school is where band and orchestra and choir and the classroom music teaching that they’re like this, and so when they join like that, it’s the old Sunday school song.

Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open up the doors and here are the people. That’s it, isn’t it? I mean, when you open up the doors, that corporate activity is full of people who submit themselves to make music together, but in their submission of themselves, they’re not they’re actually finding more of themselves. Anyway, I’m taking over again.

Debbie O’Shea 

No, I agree, and it’s exactly what I spend my life banging on about it, so absolutely there with the things like Together Sing and my Music For Every Child Every Week and all of the other passion projects I work on, that is what it’s all about. Children need it more and more these days with standardised testing and achieving certain standards, we need time to just be together and work together. Can I say, what are bosses looking for? Aren’t they looking for people that can be a good team member. Work in a group, bounce ideas off each other, head in the same direction, think creatively. So we should not have to fight for music in our schools, because we need it in our society.

Ralph Hultgren 

I mean, we talk about that and we think we’re so enlightened and blah, blah, blah. The Singaporean government. The country formed in the mid 60s out of what was Malaysia and one of the things that they said is that they worked hard to establish themselves as a knowledge nation and blah, blah, blah, and took themselves from the third world to the first world and did a fantastic job with all of that sort of stuff.

But the thing that was most amazing was when they got to that level, when they got to be financially and productively secure, they said music has to be in every child’s life. They funded music from Kindergarten through to the end of High School. High School and then they have Junior College, which is year 11 and 12. They funded it and they put choirs and bands and everything in all the schools and they just said, it’s part of what we have to do.

We can’t just be this wonderful corporate entity. There’s another part of humanity and that has to be fed. So it’s just terrific. About 10 years ago, they thought that there was something wrong with what was happening, for example, the area I work in, in bands and schools. So they investigated what was happening in bands and schools and they didn’t complain about the teachers, they didn’t complain about the kids, they didn’t complain about the schools. They said, We aren’t supporting it properly and they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to each high school to make their band program better.

Debbie O’Shea 

That sounds like a pretty amazing story.

Ralph Hultgren 

I know, but it’s a society that’s again, because the Singaporeans are very much like this. And you go like this, and there’s the people and it’s the government saying we’re not looking after the people properly, we want kids with instruments in their hands, so we should do a better job of it. Wow. What an epiphany.

Debbie O’Shea 

We need to send that to our decision makers, that little story, don’t we?

Ralph Hultgren 

Yes, I know. Well I’ve pushed that little story around a bit and it’s been pushed back at me. So there you go.

Debbie O’Shea 

Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you a bit about your composition process, because then I want to delve more into how classroom and instrumental music are sort of linked and how we work together. But before we go on that, let’s have a little talk about your composition journey and about your black dots on a white page.

Ralph Hultgren’s PhD

Ralph Hultgren 

I guess one of the things those who are listening to this could do, if they wanted to, is they could actually type in their browser doctorate.hultgren.com.au, that’s my PhD thesis. I presented my PhD thesis as a website.

Debbie O’Shea 

Okay, I will put that link in the show notes and if anyone is looking for the show notes, they don’t appear on all of your players. Before you go and delve into Spotify and whatever you’ll actually have to come back to my website and you will find the show notes there. So you’ve just got to find the appropriate podcast episode. I’ve sort of lost track of the numbers. Sorry about that. You’ll find it, and then you can have a look at the link in there. So we’ll pop that link in for you.

Ralph Hultgren 

So that was my masters, I wanted to know why I composed. So it was very autobiographical and so I wrote a symphony and integrated the process of doing the writing. Now, in the doctorate, it’s based around the major case study of my doctorate is about how I responded as a composer, how I responded as a human being to my sister taking her own life and what I did is I wrote a piece of music and it’s a terrible tragedy, the story of my sister taking her own life, but the piece is in D major and it’s beautiful.

How did that come about? So it’s an interrogation of that sort of thing. And through the period of my doctoral candidacy I wrote 34 pieces, everything from elementary band and string music to professional level music and they’re all in there. But the two major case studies, the major and minor case study, are about my sister and then a piece I wrote for a school.

What I do is, it’s the whole process I talk about, Here I am sitting here at my desk and I sat at this desk and I had my computer running here and my manuscript in front of me and I scribble, scribble, scribble and I’ve just drawn up the pages of manuscript to write the score, because this is back before, this is in the stone age, just like chiseling. I didn’t have anything then, I used pencil and paper and through the doctorate process, I actually went to start to do engraving.

But it goes step by step. So when I’m writing the music, I start like this, because I can’t play the piano. I hear the sounds and over years and years and years, I’ve developed them, and blah, blah, develop my capacity to hear. I don’t have perfect pitch, but I have pretty good relative pitch. So I can pick up the manuscript pad and drag out the pencils.

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh my goodness, for those people who are just listening, not watching, there’s a big mug full of pencils.

Pencil and Paper

Ralph Hultgren 

That’s one of four that are sitting on my desk. Because when I get started, back in the time I’d have A3 pages of score paper, I would sit down and the first thing I do is I’d sharpen the pencils so that nothing stopped me writing. When it went blunt, turn it upside down, stick it in, move the next mug of pencils in, so and so forth. So the process is, because I can’t play the piano, I’d never sit down and fiddle with anything. It would just run in my head.

There are many that can tell you, Debbie O’Shea, that I’ve got lots of voices in my head obviously. So somebody would commission me to write something, or my school ensemble was doing something, I thought, oh, you know, this would be lovely for them, so I’d write something.

A lot of people know me as a band person, but four of my five kids played strings. I’ve got a string quartet. My eldest is a cellist, my second eldest is a violist and my two youngest are violinists. My middle boy, my middle boys the trouble, he’s the grunge guitarist. So I’ve written lots of that, I’ve got spring orchestra music published in the United States that I wrote for Megan and Rebecca, my two eldest who played viola and cello and Julie, the wicked stepmother, who I wrote the piano parts for and that became a string orchestral piece.

So, yeah, so there’s lots of things that run around in the head and they’re everything from good pedagogical music. But good pedagogy music has to be good music. I mean, if it’s not good music, you can’t teach with it. So that’s the teacher’s job. The instrumental teacher’s job is to make sure that the music that they select has resonances with the method book they’re using, so that there’s two teaching opportunities every week. Therefore, if they’ve selected good music, there’s two music opportunities each week as well, not just teaching opportunities.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, absolutely.

Ralph Hultgren 

Do I have that pulpit still going?

Debbie O’Shea 

It’s good. It’s quite a good pulpit. Just keep it there. So when you’ve got a melody, so perhaps there’s a little motif singing in your head, right? Which is great. That’s what we try and teach our kids to do, is to audiate, to hear inside their head. Does that sound to you in the timbre of the instrument you want to write it for inside your head?

Ralph Hultgren 

Generally, yeah. So when I write my scores and if your listeners go and look at the scores in my doctoral site. So the doctoral site has a tab for every piece I wrote and it’s got every sketch I wrote and every manuscript score and every engraved score and where there’s a recording, even if it’s just a MIDI file, it’s there as well. There’s videos of performances and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

One of the things I talk about is when I write the sketch, you know that scribbly stuff that looks like chook scratch, when I write that, the less information there is on the page, the more sure of what I want. I go through and I say, mmm, okay, and on another bit it says, oh, clarinets here. Okay, so I’ve heard the melody, but there’s so much cacophony in my head, it’s that Ralph, that part is the clarinet. So I’ll write CLA, something like that. So, yeah, yeah, I hear them and I hear the rhythms.

Sometimes it’s a rhythmic construct that starts my mind running. Melodies though, melodies are storytellers. They’re narratives. If you sit down at the piano with your little kids and you play The Grand Old Duke of York, you say to them, Be the music. They will stand up and March. You don’t have to tell them to be a soldier. You just have to tell them to be the music. If you play a waltz, you’ll say, be the music, and they will dance.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yes, I love that. I like using scarves that way too. You put music on and you’ve got a scarf and you say, be the music, show me the music and they will give you exactly what the music is.

Ralph Hultgren 

They’re more capable than we think. We say sometimes we don’t train them, we tame them.

Debbie O’Shea 

But we’ve got to be so careful don’t we, that we don’t tame the creativity out of them.

Ralph Hultgren 

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, Amen, yes. You bet. that’s the problem. And I think what we do, I’ll try to be circumspect as I say this. I think what we do in the study of music, especially in secondary schools and then into university, we take away creativity from them, because the people teaching don’t know how to teach composition because they can’t compose themselves. Bless you all. We also analyse the music of dead white men and what we should be doing is taking the music of those composers, wonderful composers and showing the student what they did and then giving them the capacity to harness those ideas and go and write something.

It can start with, you write your little piece now with that little couple of words in the style of Handel, go and do that, but we don’t want to do that or we think that’s an imperialist attitude or something. Well, no, no. Nick their ideas. Nick their ideas. I’m sitting with my manuscript pad and my great big mug of pencils, hoping eventually to come up with an original idea.

Debbie O’Shea 

So there’s nothing original on this earth.

Ralph Hultgren 

No, no, no. You know, the 12 tones of the chromatic scale and all the variations in all the other musics. Anyway, yeah, we should be having this conversation. Debbie O’Shea with a glass of wine in our hand.

Debbie O’Shea 

I would not complain. I’ve got water instead, I tell you what, I’ll have the wine in a couple of hours from now and I’ll sort of toast you.

Ralph Hultgren 

Well I’ll lift a glass with you too.

Sign-Off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes and transcript and all sorts of information on crescendo.com.au. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast or found it valuable, you might like to rate it on your podcast player and leave a review. I’d really appreciate it if you did. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know, laughter relieves stress, don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.
Did you hear about the human cannonball? He got fired.