Sound Ideas -
Australian Contemporary Composers Born Since
1950
published
by the Australian Music Centre in 1995.
RITES OF PASSAGE - THE LAST TWENTY YEARS.
AUSTRALIAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 1972-1992
Brenton
Broadstock 1992
On December 2, 1972 a revolution occurred in Australia that
changed the direction of Australia, politically,
economically, socially and culturally. It was probably one
of the most significant events to occur in this country
since the Second World War. It caused division and heated
debate on a scale never experienced and has had
ramifications, which are still felt in Australian society.
The event that caused the revolution was the election of
the Gough Whitlam Labor government, after 23 years of
Liberal-Country Party rule dominated by Robert Menzies. The
new administration came in like a whirlwind, and within
three months Australian foreign and domestic policy had
been radically transformed.
Gough Whitlam
Here are
just some of the changes that occurred:
On
December 5 Whitlam
was sworn in and immediately he assumed, on an interim
basis, 13 of 27 portfolios. He immediately: ended
conscription and orders draft resisters released from
prison; confirms that he will establish diplomatic ties
with China; opposed independence for Rhodesia; approved
sanctions against South Africa.
On
December 7 he stops
federal government nominations for British knighthood and
other titles; declines the customary appointment to the
Privy Council in London; plans to offer new forms of
official recognition; states that women will receive equal
pay.
On
December 8 he bars
segregated sporting teams from Australia and ends the 27.5%
tax on contraceptives.
On
December 9 he
freezes lease applications in the NT pending recognition of
aboriginal claims.
On
December 14 he
announces that aborigines will receive primary education in
their own language with English as a second language; halts
wheat exports to Rhodesia.
On
December 18 he
becomes foreign minister.
On
December 21 he sends
a letter to President Nixon protesting US bombing in
Vietnam.
On
December 22 he
establishes diplomatic ties with China and the German
Democratic Republic and severs relations with Taiwan.
On
December 26 he ends
racial restrictions on immigration policy.
On
January 3 he warns
France that it will petition the World Court to ban nuclear
tests in the Pacific.
On
January 5 he
simplifies and reduces costs of divorce procedures.
On January 11 he bans
the exports of kangaroo products.
On
January 26 he asks
Australians to submit entries to replace God Save The Queen
as the national anthem.
On
February 13 the
reference to Queen Elizabeth is omitted from the oath of
allegiance and citizenship privileges are suspended for
British immigrants.
On
February 19 an
independence date is set for Papua-New Guinea.
On
February 23 he
pledges joint Australian-Indonesian co-operation after four
days of talks with President Suharto.
On
February 26 diplomatic
relations are established with North Vietnam.
On
February 27 he
proposes
legislation that would establish universal health
insurance, increase pensions, and lower the voting age to
18.
Whitlam and his ministers, Rex Connor, Clyde
Cameron, Jim Cairns and Lionel Murphy
Many of these changes and those that followed were
monumental and had a far-reaching effect upon the
development of the arts and music in Australia.
To summarise the result of these actions:
The thrust of many of Whitlam’s changes was toward an
‘Australianisation’ of our country and its people. He broke
many ceremonial, legal and ancestral ties Australian had
with Britain. He forged a new and independent foreign
policy. He developed a new nationalism and a new Australian
consciousness, putting the focus on who we were (in 1972)
and what we could become as a nation, and not what we had
been. This was radical and the debate over republicanism
and a new flag is still raging today.
The corollary of our break with the ‘mother country’ was
the necessity to find our place in the world, and this was
to be in Asia. There was, and still is, a strong move to
multiculturalism; the ‘White Australia Policy’ was ended,
and desire and necessity to become part of the Asian region
manifested itself in the recognition of several Asian
countries and the development of trade and diplomatic links
with other countries with which Australia had previously
had a tenuous relationship.
Gough Whitlam became the Minister for the Arts and
personally saw to their restructuring, development and
encouragement. He reorganised what was the Advisory Board,
Commonwealth Assistance to Australian Composers into the
Australian Council for the Arts (now called the Australia
Council) with seven autonomous boards - theatre, music,
literature, visual and plastic arts, crafts, film and
television, and aboriginal arts and in its first year
provided $14 million. This heralded a new era of government
patronage for music.
The government supported the building boom in the arts. The
Sydney Opera House was opened on October 20, 1974. The new
concert hall in Perth opened on January 26, 1974.
Construction of a festival-centre complex was under way in
Adelaide and the first hall opened in June 1974. The
Seymour Centre at Sydney University was under construction,
and in Melbourne work began on the Victorian Arts Centre
opera and ballet theatre. Coincidentally and significantly
titled, Peter Sculthorpe’s ‘opera’ Rites of Passage was
commissioned for the production at the Sydney Opera House.
These three factors, Australianisation, Asianisation and
patronage, I believe, had a significant impact upon the
development of music in Australia and represent a ‘rites of
passage’ period where Australian music moved from a
virtually homogenous and traditional Anglo-Celtic view of
music, to one which now, in 1992, is world oriented and
multifarious.
Firstly, the move to Australianisation has manifested
itself in fewer composers travelling to England as the main
centre of compositional learning.
Of the earlier generation of composers, nearly all went to
England first, to establish themselves as ‘legitimate’
composers. Obviously the experience was important, Europe
was culturally richer than Australia, but there was still
the need to ‘go overseas’ and make it there first.
Arthur Benjamin went to England when he was seventeen and
returned later in 1922 to teach at the RCM; Roy Agnew went
to England in 1923. Margaret Sutherland went to London in
1924 and studied with Arnold Bax. Peggy Glanville-Hicks
received a scholarship to the RCM in 1931 where she studied
with Vaughn Williams, Arthur Benjamin and Constant Lambert
(later she went for further study in Vienna with Egon
Wellesz, and Paris with Nadia Boulanger). Dulcie Holland
studied at the RCM with John Ireland. Miriam Hyde studied
at RCM with R.O. Morris and Gordon Jacob. Dorian Le
Galliene went to London in 1938 to the RCM, and again in
1951 when he studied with Gordon Jacob. Don Banks studied
with Matyas Seiber, while Malcolm Williamson settled in
England in 1953 and studied with Elisabeth Lutyens and
Erwin Stein. David Lumsdaine, Banks and Williamson all
settled permanently in England. Keith Humble studied at RAM
for a year, composition with Howard Ferguson, before moving
to Paris in 1951, where he studied with Rene Leibowitz.
Nigel Butterley studied with Priaulx Rainier. Colin Brumby
with Alexander Goehr (also studied with Philip Jarnach in
Barcelona). James Penberthy studied in England, France and
Italy in 1951. Even Peter Sculthorpe went to Oxford in
1958, studying composition with Edmund Rubbra and Egon
Wellesz, but it was this experience that was the turning
point for him and caused him to look toward Asia and
Australia as a greater source of inspiration.
Of those who went to the USA, Richard Meale went to UCLA to
study non-western music in 1960; he then went on to France
and Spain. Larry Sitsky studied at the San Francisco
Conservatorium with Egon Petri.
Richard Meale
In the late 1960s and early 1970s several of the now middle
to senior generation composers went to England. Anne Boyd
went to York in 1969 and received her doctorate there in
1972. Martin Wesley-Smith went to York in 1971. Ross
Edwards went to London and to York in 1970 and remained
until 1973; he studied with Peter Maxwell Davies. Ian
Bonighton also went but was unfortunately killed there in
1975. Alison Bauld studied with Elizabeth Lutyens in London
and went to the University of York in 1971. Bauld and
Jennifer Fowler have both settled in England.
Barry
Conyngham
Barry
Conyngham was an exception, who, late in 1972, went to the
USA on a Harkness Fellowship, following on from his visit
to Japan in 1970. In the USA he became aware of electronic
and computer music. David Ahern studied with Stockhausen in
Cologne in 1969, but then went to London where he was
influenced by Cornelius Cardew.
Most of the younger generation, born since 1950, have gone
to places other than England and I will talk about some of
them later.
Secondly, the
Asianisation process has caused several developments.
Several composers have travelled to centres in Asia for
study in both Asian performance and compositional practice
and various multicultural ensembles have emerged.
Several composers while not necessarily studying Asian
music have felt less self conscious about using or
assimilating Asian musical techniques in their composition.
The influence of Asian philosophy, perhaps as filtered
through the ideas of such people as John Cage, has created
a new breed of ‘experimental’ composers who have created
music on ‘found’ and invented instruments, many similar to
traditional Asian instruments, and who have sought new
means of musical expression centred around normal life
situations, such as sound sculptures and outdoor space.
They have become ‘like’ Asian musicians, who are performers
and composers, involved in the traditions of their society
and they moved away from the traditional modes of western
musical thought that have limited music to the concert hall
and anachronistic ensembles and institutions.
Thirdly,
the increase in patronage for music has had considerable
ramifications for music in general. (In 1992 $60 million
was allocated to the Australia Council.)
There was greater support for composers, allowing them time
to compose.
David Tunley said in 1978:
Some
idea of the financial support recently enjoyed by
Australian composers can be gained by noting that in the
twelve month period 1974-75 the Australian Council provided
up to 75% of commission fees paid to some 40 composers, and
granted generous fellowships to 19 composers for the
purposes of composition, travel, research or further
study….financial assistance.... has been considerably
increased towards publishing, copying, and recording,
towards seminars and the general propagation of Australian
music. Thus after a period of virtual neglect the
Australian composer has entered an era of patronage that
would seem to rival the princely courts of the past.
Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that it came at a time
when Australia was experiencing an unprecedented level of
prosperity and displaying an ebullient spirit of national
awareness and independence.
(p.5 Australian Composition in the Twentieth Century)
In 1992 the Australia Council allocated approximately $1
million to the support of composers through commissions,
residencies, creative development and study. There were
several full-time year-long fellowships also available.
Ironically, it is also a legacy of Whitlam’s support for
the arts that young composers expect to be supported. They
have grown up in an era where funding has always been
available and if one wishes to pursue composition there
will be funding for commissions, residencies, copying of
parts, creative development and overseas study. This
situation is becoming more dire and competitive, with a
decrease in funding during a recession and an increase in
the number of composers, many of who do not want other
work, or cannot get it, and see the Australia Council as a
means of support.
In addition a large amount of money was given to performers
for the performance of Australian music. So it was not
enough to pay a composer to produce the music it also had
to be performed. The Australia Council has been
instrumental in setting up and maintaining a performance
infrastructure. In 1992 $1.9 million was given to
performing activities. In particular contemporary music
ensembles have been given strong support - Flederman,
Seymour Group, Synergy, Elision, Chamber Made Opera,
Perihelion and many others
The government supported the building boom in the arts. The
Sydney Opera House was opened on October 20, 1974. The new
concert hall in Perth opened on January 26, 1974.
Construction of a festival-centre complex was under way in
Adelaide and the first hall opened in June 1974. The
Seymour Centre at Sydney University was under construction,
and in Melbourne work began on the Victorian Arts Centre
opera and ballet theatre. Peter Sculthorpe was commissioned
to write the ‘opera’ Rites of Passage for production at the
Sydney Opera House.
There was a strong move toward the use of technology in
music and there was money available to set up electronic
studios at Adelaide University, Melbourne University, La
Trobe University (1974) and the NSW Conservatorium of
Music. This has produced a generation of electronic
composers.
IDENTITY CRISIS - IDENTITY INDIFFERENCE
Since
the early 1970s composers have looked elsewhere for places
to consolidate their compositional skills. Paradoxically,
Whitlam’s push to independence, and associated
‘Australian-ness’, can be seen as being incompatible with
his push to multiculturalism and increasing identification
with Asia, and has led to greater difficulty in identifying
what is ‘Australian’, and may make it impossible to ever
create an Australian musical sound.
The result of this paradox is that for many of the younger
composers an Australian sound is simply not an issue; being
Australian is a fact that they take for granted and do not
feel the need to be ‘Australian’. This has been exacerbated
by their study in overseas countries some of which are
becoming subsumed into a unified Europe and which place no
value on Australian music; it is seen as a country which is
too far removed from the mainstream of musical activity to
possibly have any influence on, or significance in, the
development of western art music.
Several composers have gone to Italy to study such as BRIAN
HOWARD, and more recently some with the respected Italian
composer Franco Donatoni - GERARD BROPHY, RICCARDO FORMOSA,
ANDREW WILSON, MARK FINSTERER and CLAUDIO
POMPILI.
GERARD BROPHY (b.1953)
studied at the Sydney Conservatorium before going to Italy.
Although he now lives in Queensland Brophy's music is
clearly European in intent and sound. Most of his
performances take place in Europe. Lynne Williams in her
article in the Musical Times in November 1988 said of
Brophy that he has been successful in:
...welding
complex techniques with an expressive quality...his very
individual voice results from a conglomerate of interests
and influences ranging from the passionate rhythms of
Brazil..., the fascination with eccentric and hedonistic
literature and painting..., to his concerns with virtuoso
performance... (p.594)
Gerard
Brophy
Several
composers have ventured to northern Europe. MICHAEL
SMETANIN, LIZA LIM and BARBARA WOOF to Holland, MICHAEL
WHITICKER to Berlin. Whiticker and Woof have taken up
positions as Composers In Residence with the ABC; Michael
with the MSO and Barbara with the SSO. None of these have
sought an 'Australian' style, nor has their music
identified with any Australian characteristics. Their eyes
are firmly fixed on Europe.
Of these,
MICHAEL SMETANIN (b.1958),
who studied with the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, has
made an impact with his aggressive music influenced by pop
and contemporary techniques. Again to quote Lynne Williams:
This
‘angry young man’ has been most outspoken in such pieces as
his recent orchestral work, Black Snow, which (apparently)
caused a furore in its repudiation of the conservative
trends seen by Smetanin in the work of the populist
composers - those deemed ‘retro-garde’ and neo-romantic.
(p.592)
LIZA
LIM (b.1966)
studied at the VCA with Richard David Hames and later with
Ton de Leeuw at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam
and has an intense interest in the so-called ‘maximalist’
or ‘new-complexity’ school, particularly the work of Brian
Ferneyhough. She has had considerable success for her age
having received several awards and commissions from Radio
Bremen, the Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble
Intercontemporain and performances at ISCM World Music Days
festivals in Hong Kong and Zurich.
Liza says that her work is:
...confusingly
intricate. I like to write music that’s multi-faceted,
labyrinthine...It’s not a linear kind of music at
all....Composition for me is more a way of living than
responding to conditions. I don’t even think in terms of
writing a particular composition. Life is more a continuous
flow from which pieces of music emerge. (Artforce, June
1992, p.6)
Several Australian composers GRAEME KOEHNE, VINCENT PLUSH
and myself have studied in the USA, a country, which to
some extent reflects a similar musical development to our
own. Also a colonised country having no tradition to draw
upon, their composers have experienced similar difficulties
in defining their national sound. It is interesting that
these composers are also exploring new levels of performer
and audience accessibility, but not necessarily
consciously.
GRAEME KOEHNE (b.1956)
first studied with Richard Meale and has assumed much of
the luxuriance and accessibility of Meale's recent style.
This aesthetic was confirmed when he studied with the grand
old man of composition in America, Virgil Thomson. For some
time he taught in Armidale, NSW and he was influenced by
the rainforests of the area, which was translated into a
work he wrote in 1982 called Rainforest. You will hear a
strong French influence, possibly of Debussy, or of the
English composer Frederick Delius. It is very lush and
accessible music and represents Koehne’s view of the
necessity for composers to appeal to an audience. A view
which other composers, such as Michael Smetanin, have
dubbed ‘retro-garde’. Koehne now teaches at the University
of Adelaide.
Graeme
Koehne
I,
BRENTON BROADSTOCK (b.1952)
also studied in the USA and upon returning to Australia,
studied with Peter Sculthorpe. My music also draws upon
many sources, including contemporary techniques, Asian
scales and certain Australian characteristics. My main
motivation is a very strong social conscience. Social
issues such as nuclear testing, pollution, mental and
physical handicaps and humankind’s ability for destruction
have inspired nearly all of my music. My orchestral work,
Voices from the Fire, is concerned with the destruction of
two groups of people, the Jews and the Tasmanian
aborigines. My Symphony #2 - Stars In A Dark Night, related
to the English composer and poet, Ivor Gurney, who suffered
from schizophrenia and died in a mental asylum in England
in 1937.
Other composers have ventured to Asia.
PETER SCHAEFER has
studied Indian music composition and performance in India
with Ashok Roy and
TONY WHEELER has
studied Chinese music composition and performance in
Shanghai and Hong Kong. Neither, as yet, has made a big
impact upon the still largely traditional realm of
composition. Both have formed multicultural performing
groups composing their own music and it will be interesting
to see how this hybrid form develops.
Several other multicultural ensembles have formed such as
Southern Crossings and Back to Back Zithers.
The 1970s saw an upsurge in the development of electronic
music and eventually into computer music. Electronic
studios were set up at Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and La
Trobe Universities and the NSW Conservatorium of Music.
Some of the younger generation now leading the way in this
area are GRAEME GERRARD at Melbourne University, DAVID
HIRST at La Trobe University, TREVOR PEARCE and ROBERT
DOUGLAS at the NSW Conservatorium, DAVID WORRALL at the
Australian Centre for Art and Technology in Canberra, and
ALISTAIR RIDDELL who is currently studying at Princeton in
the USA.
ALISTAIR RIDDELL and
GRAEME GERRARD both
studied at La Trobe University that has produced several
important composers in the electronic and sound art areas.
RIDDELL produced a piece in 1984 called Fantasie, which is
for piano controlled by microcomputer. The computer drives
the piano hammers with incredible speed and accuracy. It
opens with a single melody played at breakneck speed, which
is soon joined by a second voice in counterpoint, and so on
until eight voices are sounding across the entire range of
the piano.
GERRARD produced a work called Birdbrain in 1991 that is
comprised almost entirely of a recording of the sounds of
birds in the bush where he used to live in Healesville. The
original recording is heard at the beginning, then is
transformed in various ways using multiple-effects boxes,
gating, multi-tracking, digital filtering and editing.
An important off-shoot from the breakdown of tradition and
the multicultural push from the 1970s is the area of sound
art, sound sculpture and audio art, the so-called
‘experimental’ music. Composition prior to the 1970s was
traditional, acoustic and western oriented. Post 1970s it
was becoming more ‘world’ oriented and many of the younger
composers, or rather sound artists began to emerge as such
because of the more liberal and experimental thinking of
people like John Cage, which was finally filtering through
to our educational institutions, particularly La Trobe
University.
Composers such as ROS BANDT, COLIN OFFORD and SARAH HOPKINS
have been creating unique sounds, instruments and sound
environments.
SARAH HOPKINS has
received several fellowships from the Australia Council and
is active in conducting workshops around Australia. She has
been composing since 1976 in an expansive, pure musical
style that resonates with the space and energy of the
Australian landscape. She composes solo and ensemble music
of a holistic nature that draws upon the natural beauty of
the cello, voice, whirly instruments and handbells. She
collaborated with ALAN LAMB to produce a work called Voice
in the Wires using abandoned telegraph wires on the
Nullabor Plain.
ROS
BANDT has
built up an international reputation for her sound
sculptures and innovative performance environments. Last
year she was the recipient of the prestigious Don Banks
Composition Fellowship awarded by the Australia Council. In
her work Ocean Bells of 1982 she uses electronic tape and
an instrument she invented called the Flagong, a 3 tiered
wooden frame with 31 suspended glass objects, mainly
flagons.
Ros Bandt
Other composers such as DAVID CHESWORTH, JOHN ROSE, RAINER
LINZ and RICHARD VELLA have often adopted a deliberate
polemical stance, aiming to shock or offend, or to place
music in a different social or political context, or to
deconstruct it in order to alter its perception.
In 1986
DAVID CHESWORTH wrote a
piece called Stories of Imitation and Corruption, which was
performed at the National Orchestral Composer’s School by
the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Chesworth wanted to place
the orchestra in an incongruous setting so that we might
hear familiar orchestral sounds differently. He did this by
incorporating tape playback consisting of very low
continuous rumbles into the performance. The orchestral
music consisted of ‘unimportant’ musical fragments lifted
from existing works by ‘famous’ composers, and fragments
composed by David which made use of just about every
compositional technique and musical style he could think
of. The fragments follow each other in a completely
arbitrary way, with no attempt to link them musically. This
was to avoid traditional narrative form.
David
Chesworth
This then covers superficially the various streams of
composition currently occurring in Australia.
©1992 Brenton Broadstock
Refer to the Australain Music Centre website for updated
biographies of the mentioned composers.
http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/