Suzanne Robinson

‘Life's Major Crossroads’: Study and Career Paths of Four Australian Women Composers at the Royal College of Music in the 1930s

Several Australian women composers were among the legions of women musicians who set out to ‘try their fortune’ in London in the 1930s only to have their study and career options curtailed by the rollercoaster of appeasement and then war. The most prominent of them—Miriam Hyde from Adelaide, Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Esther Rofe from Melbourne, and Dulcie Holland from Sydney—each found themselves in the grip of the twin pincers of family anxiety, on the one hand, and the prospect of bombing and hardship on the other. Despite successful studies and the networks and opportunities they gained in the avenues of composition for film, ballet and concerts, three of these women were obliged by family pressure to return home either before or at the outset of the war. Arguably, had they stayed their careers may have been circumscribed by events and they may have struggled, as Elisabeth Lutyens did, to earn a living. But the one who remained overseas was the one who spurned family entreaties, and what Carolyn Heilbrun calls the erotic or familial plot, to follow creative compulsion in the theatre and, later, in the United States, to become a prominent freelance composer and critic. Through reference to letters, diaries, memoirs and recollections, this paper examines how family, political turmoil, war and a sense of obligation impinged on the career trajectories of these women and how they each determined either to abide by convention or repudiate it.

‘Mr. Percy Grainger: A Prophet of Modernism’—How Grainger Brought Ultra-modernism to Australia, 1934–1935

In 1934 Grainger described himself to a Perth newspaper as ‘prophet of modernism’, the first to introduce Debussy and Cyril Scott to English audiences and a pioneer in performances of Ravel, Albeniz, Delius and the American composer John Alden Carpenter. Unquestionably, however, the most modern music touted in Australia immediately before the arrival of the Ballet Russes in Australia in 1936 was that by Grainger himself. On a tour lasting the best part of two years, and in the course of hundreds of lectures, recitals and mainstream orchestral concerts, Grainger introduced to Australians the novel sights and sounds of gamelan-inspired ‘tuneful percussion’ and persistently advocated elements of primitive music—microtonality, irregular rhythm, discordance and hybridity—as the source of musical progress. On 10 January 1935 Grainger broadcast from Melbourne the world premiere of Free Music No.1 for string quartet, a work entirely composed of sliding tones. Possibly his most radical instrumental work, its full realization would come the following year when it was transcribed for theremin and Grainger began his experiments in electronic music. This paper argues that Grainger explained and defined ultra-modernism all over Australia and to vast audiences with enormous success. While they may not have been aware of it, he had predicted several of the future paths of modern music.

Homage to a ‘non-harmonic genius’: Glanville-Hicks on Cage

Abstract In 1949 Peggy Glanville-Hicks composed Obeisance to a Lucite Spectrum for piano solo, a birthday gift for her friend John Cage. But it is a piece that she never subsequently acknowledged and that is not recorded in any of her lists of works. Composed at a time when Glanville-Hicks was vigorously and almost unilaterally promoting Cages music in the pages of Musical America, the New York Herald Tribune and Vogue, and when the evidence of their extant correspondence suggests an intimate and mutually supportive friendship, it reflects their common interests in Indian philosophy and aesthetics as well as in mysticism in general. In the numerological basis of the works system of durations and attacks, and in its gestures in honour of Cages concepts of ‘grace’ and ‘clarity’, it can be seen that this composition is a homage not just to the man but to the compositional and aesthetic formulations which provided the foundation of prepared piano works such as Sonatas and Interludes (1946–8). Through examination of scores, correspondence and critical writings this article explores the basis of these interrelationships to demonstrate Glanville-Hickss contribution to Cages career and reputation, and the significance of his ideas for her future compositional direction.

The Midsummer Marriage in New Year: A comparison of Tippett's first and latest operas

Abstract Tippetts most recent opera, New Year, recalls the structure and sources of his first opera, The Midsummer Marriage. Both works include dance and supernatural events to add a ritual and mythical dimension in order to chart the spiritual and psychological journey of its protagonists. New Year, however, is novel in its synthesis of modem Britain and a Utopian Nowhere, and is musically distinguished by a motto which unites the wide spectrum of characters and events.