John Antill (1904-1986) was one of the foremost composers of Australia's post-colonial period. Although a relatively prolific and much esteemed composer in Australia, Antill's wider reputation is sustained chiefly by his famous ballet Corroboree - a work which was perceived to bring an authentic Australian musical style before both a national and international audience for the first time. Through Sir Eugene Goossens' championship, the work was heard by enthusiastic audiences in Australia, Britain, Europe and the USA, and was, for many years, the best-known work of any Australian-born and resident composer. Indeed it has remained, for both Australian and overseas audiences, an Australian musical icon. David Symons traces Antill's development as a composer from his early, pre-Corroboree works, which display a late Romantic to post-impressionist style, through an analysis of the virile, dissonant, primitivist idiom of his magnum opus, to an examination of his later output of theatrical, orchestral and vocal/choral works. The book provides comprehensive and valuable insight into Antill's musical output, at the same time focussing on more detailed analyses of his major works which have reached public performances and/or recordings. In this way the book not only presents a developmental picture of Antill's works, but also demonstrates why they have made him one of Australia's most prominent musical creators of the post-colonial period.
Australia’s Jindyworobak Composers examines the music of a historically and artistically significant group of Australian composers active during the later post-colonial period (1930s–c. 1960). These composers sought to establish a uniquely Australian identity through the evocation of the country’s landscape and environment, including notably the use of Aboriginal elements or imagery in their music, texts, dramatic scenarios or ‘programmes’. Nevertheless, it must be observed that this word was originally adopted as a manifesto for an Australian literary movement, and was, for the most part, only retrospectively applied by commentators (rather than the composers themselves) to art music that was seen to share similar aesthetic aims. Chapter One demonstrates to what extent a meaningful relationship may or may not be discernible between the artistic tenets of Jindyworobak writers and apparently likeminded composers. In doing so, it establishes the context for a full exploration of the music of Australian composers to whom ‘Jindyworobak’ has come to be popularly applied. The following chapters explore the music of composers writing within the Jindyworobak period itself and, finally, the later twentieth-century afterlife of Jindyworobakism. This will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers of Ethnomusicology, Australian Music and Music History.
Generally regarded as one of the most important Australian composers of her era, Margaret Sutherland, in the words of Roger Covell, 'naturalised the twentieth century in Australian music'. David Symons, senior lecturer in music at the University of WA, examines Sutherland's music and its stylistic development in the context of Australian composition. From a wide variety of sources he has unearthed both published and unpublished compositions through which he shows Sutherland's pioneering role as the first native born composer working in Australia to write in an idiom comparable to her European contemporaries.
My maternal Grandmother was born in Waterloo, Quebec, Canada, and married a dairy farmer who chose to make his fortune in life by moving his family to the tiny Village of Ballston Spa, New York. While living in Canada, she bore and raised four children, Eric, Janie, Jim and Dick. Upon my birth in New York she became a grandmother three short years before my grandfather sold his dairy farm & ice cream store to Friendly's, after which the two of them retired to Chula Vista, California. Her first poetry book was published in 1940, entitled Dream Dust. She subsequently published three more books, Echoes of a Singing Heart in 1955, Chiaroscuro in 1965, and Wings on the Wind in 1976. Her poetry has been prominently featured in both Popular Poetry Magazine and The Poetry Digest. Besides her poetry, she was an accomplished artist that lovingly worked in charcoal, watercolor, oils, ceramics and more. She also contentedly dabbled daily in her expansive rose and vegetable gardens. My most precious memories of her are of strolling amongst the beaches and tide pools of Coronado Island and La Jolla, California, our myriad visits to the San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park and numerous museums, as well as playing Scrabble, checkers, chess, backgammon, and other thought-provoking games and art-related projects on her screened-in porch. To this very day I still miss her dearly. * * * * * David H. V. H. Meisburger I was born on August 1, 1953, in Ballston Spa, New York, and raised on the family dairy farm for my first few years of life while my father served aboard a ship in the U. S. Navy during the Korean War. The farm had an honest-to-goodness spring in the far corner of their fenced property which fed a small brook, home to ravenous trout that bit at just about anything that was dropped in their path. As a toddler I explored everywhere I could get to; the barn, hayloft, cow and horse pastures, grain fields, farm equipment, and more. In my grandmother's first poem about me, I'm related as being a terror, well representative of my Leo's horoscope sign. I've traveled to and enjoyed the sights, sounds, and merriment in forty-eight of our fifty states, only missing Alaska and Idaho. I'm now 63 and officially retired, but I still help out my friends with their work whenever they're in need, as they do the same for me. Due to my grandmother, I began writing and appreciating art in all its myriad forms at a very early age, which has inspired me to compile and compose this book in her honor.
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