SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY (from 1993 to 2010)

Andrew Ford is Australia's leading music affairs broadcaster, and himself a composer; 37-44 [interview with Sculthorpe], including: 37 [photo] of PS, ]; 40-41 [Kakadu]; 40 [Port Essington]; 41 [The Song of Tailitnama]; 43 [String Quartet No 8]; references to PS and his music in Ford's interviews with other composers: 31; 34; 104; 164; 165; 198; 200 [Sun Music series]; 201; 202.

Deborah Hayes's invaluable and meticulously detailed source book, contains an illuminating short biography, and an all but complete listing of Sculthorpe sources as they were known to be at the date of completion (early 1993); adding to its anyway already considerable value, Sculthorpe was deeply and personally involved in its production; it remains an indispensible tool for Sculthorpe scholarship.

In 1971, Sydney designer Marion Best designed a "Sculthorpe Room" as part of a charity exhibition of 10 rooms for Australian celebrities (others included Robert Helpmann, Prue Acton, and Harry Miller.

A short introduction to and analysis of Sun Music 1; 480 (description), 481 (music example)

Jill Sykes is the dance reviewer of The Sydney Morning Herald.

298 [during 1964 Adelaide Festival, PS among party at GD's country house Anlaby];
380 [mid 60s, dinner at Patrick White's house including Tass and Maisie Drysdale: "I could see that Patrick was working himself up to an outburst. He achieved it by a ferocious attack on the composer Peter Sculthorpe. Maisie interrupted him by saying, 'Stop trampling on my friends'."]

244 [PW's views on PS's music], 245 [PW's texts for a projected Sculthorpe setting of Six Urban Songs]; 252-257 [PW discusses work on a projected Sculthorpe opera on A Fringe of Leaves]; 270 [PW has doubts about collaboration with PS] 371 [PW avoids PS]; 642 [biographical note by DM].

A chronicle of 20th-century music in date order, with idiosyncratic commentary, including the following references to PS works: 627 [19 June 1955, Fp Piano Sonatina]; 763 [30 September 1965, FP Sun Music [I]: "In the course of the Commonwealth Arts Festival in London, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents the first performance of Sun Music by the 36-year-old Tasmanian composer Peter Sculthorpe, climaxed by an integrated icositetraphonic sonic aggregate of 59 adjacent quarter-tones for string instruments."; 819 [22 February 1970, FP of Love 200]832 [5 June 1971, London ISCM perf of Tabuh Tabuhan]; 897 [Mangrove, 28 April 1979, FP Mangrove]; 938 [16 May 1984, Moscow perf of String Quartet No 6]; 974 [19 August 1988, PS attends Composer-to-Composer, Telluride Colorado, along with VP, Brian Eno, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Stephen Scott, Sarah Hopkins and Lepo Sumera]

While PS is not included in this conspectus of composers born after 1950, he is mentioned as a teacher of and influence on several.

PS sat to a portrait for Cassab.

A distinguished writer on 20th-century music, DM was founding head of Faber Music, and was PS's publisher from 1965; xxx; 223 [Sun Music I].

On Djilile for viol consort

Includes discussion of music of Sculthorpe, Grainger and Glanville-Hicks.

"One stimulus for a program of commissioning was the donation from composer Mirrie Hill for an award to commemorate her colleague and husband, Alfred Hill, who died in 1960. The first two Alfred Hill awards went to Peter Sculthorpe and Larry Sitsky for their Sixth and First String Quartets, works which added considerably to the composers' stature."

255 [Kronos Quartet recording of PS's String Quartet No 8]

158-160 [Sculthorpe's piano works]

Volume 4: 2533-34; 2533 [String Quartet No 6 ; quotes Wilfrid Mellers "this is the only music known to me ... feel of Australia"; Red Landscape (String Quartet No 7): "A focused (seven-minute) study in string sonorities and colours ... There are no themes to mollify the polychrome essences of the work"]; 2534 [String Quartet No 8 : "A tour de force of color actions"; apropos the fast movements: "If there exists impressionistic injection into string percussive content Sculthorpe has mastered it. It is thrilling, exciting and startling in its originality". "... [a] brilliant work."

170-71 [Sun Musics I-IV], 187.

PS is mentioned in several other entries, including 141-42.

xi [lists PS among famous alumni]; 95 ["Sculthorpe and Dreyfus wrote piano and bassoon pieces for each other's final year performance exams"]; 96 [PS listed among students of Lambert]; 97 [PS listed among composer student of Heinze's "golden" period]; 131 [PS awarded Melbourne Doctor of Music in 1989]; 133 [photo of PS at doctoral graduation with dean Ronald Farren-Price]

126: "And if we use music as a means of insight into other cultures, then equally we can see it as a means of negotiating cultural identity. [A] comprehensive example is postwar Australian music; composers like Peter Sculthorpe have drawn on native Australian and East Asian musics in such a way as to contribute towards the broader cultural and political repositioning of Australia as an integral part of the emerging region of the Pacific Rim, rather than a European culture on the wrong side of the world."

"Landscape has always been a resonant theme in Peter Sculthorpe's writing. The word occurs often in the composer's notes, and in critical responses to his work. Sculthorpe describes his latest string quartet as a work 'concerned with feelings about mountainous landscapes in northern Tasmania'[...]."

Discussion of Sun Music ballet.

On poems for PS by Michael Dransfield

On poems for PS by Michael Dransfield

On Sculthorpe: 577-579 [Irkanda series, 577-8; Kakadu, 578-9; Mangrove, 579; Requiem, 578].

PS's memoirs

Sculthorpe's piano works, 195-196.

Abstract: "[...] This thesis seeks to devise modes of articulating cross-cultural interaction in contemporary art music [...] through study of four contemporary composers of art music of varied cultural backgrounds: Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Peter Sculthorpe and Toru Takemitsu [...]" [principle subject is Takemitsu]

Growing up, I cherished the idea of Sculthorpe, even though I knew little of his music: it seemed important that there should be such a thing as a Tasmanian composer. In the early '60s, he set a portion of my adolescent life to music -at least I thought until very recently that he had done so. At the age of 13, I had a part in a children's film called They Found a Cave. With a Blyton-esque gang of siblings I pretended to go bush, running away from home to be a cave-dweller. In one way, the pretence was in deadly earnest: I played a little English boy, evacuated to Tasmania during the Blitz. I did not have to bother aping the accent, since my voice was dubbed by a menopausal contralto. Sculthorpe, who had just returned to Tasmania after studying at Oxford, composed a score for the film, with a jaunty waltz that Larry Adler, gracing us with a little international credibility, played on his harmonica. The tune stuck in my memory, encapsulating the mood of the film and of my Tasmanian boyhood: bucolic, chirpy, yet somehow bereft, going round in circles before it trailed away into depression.
A while ago in Sydney I found a compact disc of Sculthorpe's music and was startled to hear the waltz again - except that it turned out to have nothing to do with Tasmania, or with me. Its proper title is Left Bank Waltz, and when Sculthorpe composed it in 1958 he was evoking the atmosphere of a Paris cafe. Three years later he simply recycled it for the film, and replaced the swooning strings with a harmonica. It was some consolation to learn that, in 1958, Sculthorpe had never been on the left bank of the Seine. This makes the waltz, after all, a piece of inadvertently Australian music: an effort to imagine, or eavesdrop on, an unattainable elsewhere.

"By 1970, the perception of Takemistu as member of the international avant-garde .... while in April 1970, Takemitsu produced a four-day festival of contemporary music in the 'Iron and Steel Pavilion', whose participants included Lukas Foss, Peter Sculthorpe and Vinko Globokar."

Includes a previously unpublished short profile of Sculthorpe by Holford.

46: "Janacek's creature imitations [in Vixen] ... are scarcely less vivid in verisimilitude than are Peter Sculthorpe's in his Australian new world."; Chapter 11: "Peter Sculthorpe in the Australian Outback" (145-159).

Tim Winton and Lucky Oceans chose the music for the novel's "soundtrack"; released in CD form in Australia in 2001, the two disc set included both bluegrass and classical music that embodies an idea quoted from the book: "Anything you could play on a verandah. You know, without electricity. Dirt music."; the Sculthorpe work chosen was Djilile for small orchestra.

Includes quotes from author's interview with Sculthorpe

259 [Kronos quartet recording of String Quartet No 8]

Many mentions of Sculthorpe: 21, 54, 79, 133, 139, 154, 167-172, 174-175, 265, 269, 283, 309, 345-346, 373, 388, 440, 453, 460, 463, 477, 494, 506, 549, 551, 555, 570, 597, 608, 645.

Sculthorpe's piano works, 224-226.

Nicholas Cook with Anthony Pople, "Introduction", 7: "There are, however, [8] references to many encounters [...] between Western and non-Western musics. These include, of course, such familiar examples as the influence of traditional Japanese musics [...] on Messiaen and Sculthorpe, as well as on the internationally minded composers of the post-war Japanese avant-garde".

Richard Toop, "Expanding Horizon's: the international avant-garde, 1962-75", 457: "An intriguing and in some respects paradoxical case history relating to Asian influence is provided by the Australian avant-garde that evolved in the course of the 1960s. Peter Sculthorpe [...], while clearly affected by aspects of Polish sonorism, insisted on the importance of Balinese and Japanese music in many works before turning to native Australian traditions; similarly, early works by Richard Meale [...] drew on concepts from Japanese culture, while espousing a harmonic language derived from Boulez."

"Personalia", 663: "Sculthorpe, Peter (b. 1929). Australian composer who became known during the 1960s, having studied in Melbourne and then Oxford. After working in a serial style early on, he developed a more individual direction which focused on achieving clarity of texture; the series of Sun Music pieces from the 1960s exemplifies these concerns. Sculthorpe's music became increasingly divorced from European models, exploring non-Western musical influences (particularly Balinese) and subsequently native Australian ones."

148: "Whenever I am pressed, really pressed, by people outside Australia (and sometimes even in Australia) to say what Australian music sounds like, I will, of course, mention Peter Sculthorpe, and pieces such as Mangrove and Earth Cry."

On PS the gardener!

Abstract: "[...] analyses of work[s] by Peter Sculthorpe (Requiem for cello alone) [...]"

Burkholder mentions Sculthorpe and his music on the final two pages of this major revision of a standard history.

203: " 'Australia was everything that I was on about and in my music I was trying to find some kind of Australian identity, so it was inevitable that I should want to stay here.' For much of his internationally successful career Peter Sculthorpe has been able to base himself in the land of his birth [... several paragraphs on career ...] Sculthorpe is one of the most distinguished composers in the world and in Australia has most appropriately been included in the National Trust's list of 'living treasures'."

Includes Sculthorpe's reminiscences of his school days in Launceston in the 1930s and 1940s.

Title of book after one of Peter Sculthorpe's piano pieces.

"Why are two of the grand old men of Australian music not composing any more, asks Martin Buzacott: They were the doyens of the 196os avant-garde. Between them, Peter Sculthorpe (born 1929), Richard Meale (1932) and Nigel Butterley (1935) took Australian music by the throat and wenched it out of its English pastoral stupor into the modern cosmopolitan era. In his Sun Music series, Sculthorpe reflected the social, anthropological and geographic idiosyncrasies of Australia. In Homage to Garcia Lorca and Very High Kings, Richard Meale tumed out orchestral scores as powerful and sophisticated as anything his European counterparts could produce, while Nigel Butterley's Meditations of Thomas Traherne and Fire in the Heavens were as radical as John Cage but somehow lyrical, visionary and humane too. For a generation, these three men defined, through music, the emerging new Australian identity. But how are they faring now at the age when composers such as Verdi, Bruckner and Vaughan Williams were composing some of their most significant music? Are the Austalian trio doing as well? Well, one of them is. Sculthorpe just keeps getting bigger. He is being performed so often he can't even keep track. "They [the performances] just keep getting more and more every year," he says. "I wouldn't have a clue how many performances there will be this year." Sculthorpe's orchestral and string quartet repertoire has been boosted in recent years by the inclusion of William Barton as didjeridu soloist. The orchestral works Earth Cry and Kakadu, plus many of the string quartets, are now standard repertoire, and Sculthorpe's 75th birthday in 2004 was celebrated with concerts all over the world.
But Butterley and Meale remain, if not exactly criminally ignored, then at least underperformed. [... remainder of the article deals with these two composers].

This major work on 20th-century Australian musical history contains numerous mentions of Sculthorpe plus several direct quotes from interviews with author

44 ["Peter Sculthorpe remembers Malcolm working as a pianist for the Borovansky Ballet (forerunners of Australian Ballet), meeting up with him in Hobart while on a month's tour of Tasmania." c.late 40s early 50s]; 189 [PS one of speakers at Canberra Composers' Seminar, 1967]; 195 ["The other four composers, though also more 'advanced' than Malcolm and therefore more attractive to the critics, offered their own distinctive brand of modernity. Peter Sculthorpe, for example, had experimented with serialism as a young man, only to develop his own unique way outside it. By 1967, he had already created a specifically 'Australian' style with his Sun Music series, Sun Music I (1965) depicting the power of the sun and the harsh desolation of the Australian landscape, Sun Music III (1967) incorporating for the first time traditional Asian music, from Bali. Although he had rejected serialism in the desire to uplift audiences, much of his work at the time was (wrote Covell) 'marked by a withdrawn, intensely personal [196] quality' and he rarely exhibited 'the glitter of virtuosity so evident in much of Malcolm Williamson's work'."; 196 [other passing mentions re Canberra]; 265 [footnote 31 mentions PS's Rites of Passage]; 402 [MW plays [? piano] works by PS, Roy Agnew and Dorian LeGallienne during a 2-week visit to Yugoslavia in summer 1984]; 503
[Specially composed tribute from PS in MW's 70th birthday concert in Wigmore Hall, London, on 21 November 2001].

This important collection of articles by invited contributors includes several that discuss Sculthorpe's works in detail, and there are numerous other references.

"[...] Mr. Sculthorpe describes the didgeridoo as ''the quintessential Australian instrument'' and says in the program that he started composing for it before Aborigines were even allowed to vote. His ''Mangrove'' (1979) and ''Earth Cry'' (1986) seemed appropriate inclusions alongside Stravinsky's ''Rite of Spring.'' The orchestral writing in the propulsive ''Earth Cry'' (a sort of Outback ''Appalachian Spring'') is straightforward and melodic. Instrumental lines are often doubled throughout (violins in unison and lower strings partnered with lower brass) with the didgeridoo, which Mr. Sculthorpe decided to add later, providing welcome texture, color and ritualistic spice. ''Mangrove,'' inspired by gorges in the Northern Territory of Australia, is a canvas of sound clusters, with the violins evoking a swarm of disgruntled flies at one point [...]."

"This is an impressive and moving work, decisively coloured by didgeridoo solos, ample drumming and close-knit harmonic writing for chorus [...]."

Report from Herald's Gallipoli correspondent on ANZAC Day ceremonies; "A piece by the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, Thoughts of Home, used the mouth organ as its chief instrument to evoke the only kind of music the 1915 diggers were able to play."

"The heartfelt new Requiem is the crowning glory of the set. [...] One would know at any given moment that it was Sculthorpe [...] An essential release from one of the world's greatest living composers."

"[Age of Consent, Powell's last feature is] beautifully, though not imaginatively, shot in vibrant color, with ample underwater shots of the Great Barrier Reef. What's notable about this issue is that the pic's 'risque' original title sequence has been restored, as has Peter Sculthorpe's beguiling original score -- both foolishly jettisoned by nervous Col execs prior to the film's debut [...] 'Making Age of Consent' features the director's son, Kevin Powell, who worked on the film, as well as editor Anthony Buckley and scorer Sculthorpe [...]."

"Decades before she entered the corridors of royalty and delivered her Oscar-winning performance in the Queen, Helen Mirren bared all in an almost forgotten Australian film called Age of Consent. [...] Yet at the time, Age of Consent horrified Columbia Pictures, which bankrolled the film but eviscerated Powell's vision in the film's international release -- taking the scissors to the nudity and scrapping composer Peter Sculthorpe's wonderful score. Now, these and other elements are back in this restored director's cut. Justice has finally been done to the final feature film of a director Mirren reveres. 'I feared it would never be seen again.' [...]"

"A MUSICAL tribute to the Thames and the Tiber makes sense. So does an ode to Sydney Harbour or San Francisco Bay. But Song of the Yarra? 'Oh, Melbourne people knock it a bit,' composer Peter Sculthorpe says in Sydney. 'But the Yarra has always had a special meaning for me [...] Sculthorpe, 79, calls his Melbourne project 'a work about reconciliation' -- an elegy to the indigenous custodians of the river that begins at night, greets the dawn and 'emerges from the darkness of the past into the light of the present. There is something ruminative about it. But it ends in a joyous way,' he says [...]."

"LAST night's first concert in the new Melbourne Recital Centre will go down in history for several great acts and one unforgivable omission. The opening work, Song of the Yarra, was a chance to acknowledge events in Marysville and Kinglake this past weekend. But no one said a word. Here was music, newly composed by an Australian, about nature in all its splendour and terror. It began with a strange crackling, like the tinkle of parched gum leaves about to burst into flame. Then came the wind, and perhaps the firestorm, evoked by giant gongs. A lovely young soprano, Chenile Chandler, sang about the land 'where dreamings never die' while two double basses kept up an ominous undercurrent [...]."

"Sculthorpe's new Song of the Yarra holds plenty of familiar strokes, including substantial percussion resources with two long thunder-sheets bracing the stage's rear and a pair of water gongs at the front, a low string trio, solo female voice and violin, and choir. The score's three parts lay on the atmospherics, concluding in a trademark wash of gong and high string glissandi, following a cleverly shaped, off-the-beat song negotiated with unflustered charm by 13-year-old Olivia O'Brien. Probably the most surprising feature of this performance came from the carrying power of the choir, members of the Song Company and the Consort of Melbourne, which maintained an audible presence even at soft moments."

"Peter Sculthorpe's Song of the Yarra, commissioned for the venue's opening, also celebrated indigenous custodians. Yarra proved a charmingly melodic and accessible work. It made vivid use of percussion: giant thundering wobble boards were suspended from 5m scaffolds and a gong and cymbal semi-submerged in water created a humming carpet of sound [...]."

"THE composer Peter Sculthorpe will lavish a $3.5 million gift tonight on the University of Sydney to create the nation's first chair of Australian music. The emeritus professor, named one of Australia's 100 Living National Treasures in 1998, wants the academic position at the university's Conservatorium of Music to nurture a pool of young composers [...]. Professor Anne Boyd, the first Australian and first woman to be appointed professor of music at the University of Sydney, said the endowment was an act of extraordinary generosity. 'This signifies a special coming of age in our nation's musical and cultural life,' she said."

"[...] the rediscovery of tonality was nothing of the sort and certainly not a case of psychological regression peculiar to Australian composers. The Stravinskys and Brittens of the world had continued to make diatonic harmony the basis of their musical language from the '30s; the exploration of non-European traditions by Peter Sculthorpe and his proteges had its parallels in other parts of the world [...]."

"Peter Sculthorpe, soon to reach his 80th birthday, appeared on stage to an affectionate ovation at the conclusion of his My Country Childhood. The work, consisting of four short movements for string orchestra, is quite beautiful and exhibits an almost aching nostalgia."

"Ross's chapters on American music particularly his account of Aaron Copland's troubled career are striking. And, yes, Australians do get a passing mention: there are a few words here about Percy Grainger's interest in folk music and about Peter Sculthorpe's debt to 'the sounds and rhythms of the Australian outback'."

"RATHER than contemplating retirement, internationally renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe will celebrate his 80th birthday year with seven world premieres. Almost 100 performances and broadcasts of his works have been scheduled throughout 2009 too. Sculthorpe was born in Launceston on April 29, 1929, and will mark the day with friends and colleagues on Wednesday at the opening party for the Peter Sculthorpe exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra [...]".

"'AS Australian as the Opera House' is a curious analogy for the music of Peter Sculthorpe. But it came to mind, nevertheless, when Lin Utzon recently described her father's imaginative feat as 'so beautiful and so, in a way, self-evident' as to seem part of the natural order. In the same way, it seems extraordinary that Sculthorpe, from his beginnings within our transplanted European classical music tradition, should have invented a music so self-evidently, ineffably, of its place as well [...]."

" 'I'm worn out, I haven't had time to turn 80,' [Sculthorpe] says from his Sydney studio, where he is hard at work putting the finishing touches on Island Dreaming, one of the highlights of The Canberra Times' Opening Gala to be held at the Albert Hall. 'I've been working so hard on all of this I haven't had time to look forward to turning 80.' He laughs, and says it's all worth it. He loves working to deadlines. 'The adrenaline's going, it somehow brings the music out of me.' [...] 'I think what I'd like to achieve is to write the perfect piece of music. But, if I wrote a piece that was perfect I'd probably give up. I think it's the journey that's important.'"

"It's a tribute to the man to have a private gathering surrounded by portraits, photographs, archival treasures from the National Library and a rich chocolate cake to cut. Yes, Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, a national treasure and all-round charming, gentle man, scored the best 80th birthday present at the National Portrait Gallery, with his image there in a visual smorgasbord for the exhibition Peter Sculthorpe: A Celebration. But the best birthday wish came from Barbara Blackman as she reminded Sculthorpe that tomorrow he would get to celebrate his ''OBE''. Did he take a nano second to ponder the receiving of that imperial honour perhaps? No. ''Over Bloody Eighty,'' Blackman said [...]"

"As the composer celebrates his 80th year, he reflects on the future of the globe. 'It does worry me,' Sculthorpe said as musicians rehearsed his controversial opera Rites Of Passage for only its second performance later this week. First played to mixed reviews at the opening of the Opera House 35 years ago, it will be revived at the Canberra International Music Festival on May 8. Sculthorpe admitted to feeling frustrated by politicians, most recently over the issue of climate change. His new music would show humankind's propensity to 'cannibalise' the very things crucial to its survival, he said [...] 'With music, I'm putting my strongest and deepest thoughts to an audience,' he said. When those thoughts are expressed in his new work on climate change, the piece will end in hope. 'It doesn't have to be. I can never end a piece in despair.'"

"[...] central to this year's Canberra event is the marking of the 80th birthday of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. Three of his works were included in Thursday night's program, all three in premiere performances of new versions. First there were the songs Island Dreaming for mezzo-soprano and string ensemble which received warmly expressive performances [...] Asian music has been a strong influence in Sculthorpe's music, and another interesting inclusion on the program was the premiere performance of an arrangement of his Koto Music for the Canberra Seven Harp Ensemble. Here the sound of the Japanese instrument was replicated with attractive effect. And the concert concluded with Pages from the Sculthorpe Songbook; jazz arrangements with an ensemble led by Phil Slater (trumpet) and Matt McMahon (piano).

"'Lying in bed as I've been going to sleep over the last few nights,' Peter Sculthorpe says, 'I've been thinking; maybe it's one of my very best pieces.' He was speaking about Friday's performance of his Rites of Passage, and judging by the atmosphere on the night, Canberra's concert-going public seems to think he might be right! The evening was a rare combination of committed presentation, wonderful music and an almost palpable engagement from the audience [...]."

"THE Goldner Quartet's Mother's Day concert was not a sentimental celebration of motherhood, just an excuse for a great concert [...] String Quartet No.11 by Peter Sculthorpe (1990) brings few surprises: indigenous themes, bird calls and landscape-evoking harmonies. It's not difficult music to interpret but the Goldners' effects were clear and convincing and their vision cohesive."

"Headlining the programme with a major Lichfield Cathedral concert on Monday July 13 are the Australian String Quartet, who will be playing works by Haydn, the composer who could be said to have 'invented' the string quartet, Mendelssohn and Peter Sculthorpe. Sculthorpe is an Australian composer who was composer in residence in Lichfield in 2004 and writes highly accessible music, strongly evocative of the landscape of his homeland."

"[Harriet] Cohen was a subtheme for the whole concert in that she not only flirted with Walton and played his music, she was the model for the chief character in D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo that Peter Sculthorpe reads with such placid wisdom in The Fifth Continent. On this occasion, Sculthorpe's better-known Kakadu opened the program in a performance that brought out the heart of the work in a beautifully balanced counterpoint of cor anglais and string melody in the central section."

"Peter Sculthorpe's Kakadu, the first Australian piece Ashkenazy has conducted with this orchestra, opened the concert. Kakadu's tripartite structure has two vigorous, dance-like sections enclosing an extended ruminative passage. The piece has been described as celebratory, but in Ashkenazy's account the colours seemed harsh and dark-hued rather than vibrant. Tight unison attack and incisive rhythms generated nervous energy instead of joyous exuberance. The orchestra relished the vivid evocations of nature: woodwind shrieks, glissando birdcalls and furiously buzzing tremolo insect swarms. It was an interesting interpretation of an important Australian work."

AMERICAN music critic Alex Ross arrived in Sydney on Wednesday [...] During his brief Australian visit, Ross hopes to attend at least one concert at the Sydney Opera House, and perhaps pick up some CDs of Australian composers. He mentions a few names of those he is familiar with: Peter Sculthorpe, Brett Dean and Matthew Hindson among them [...]."

"[...] In the Sculthorpe Songbook, which premieres at the Stonnington Jazz festival tonight, Tim Freedman of the Whitlams will join Katie Noonan to sing It'll Rise Again, originally performed by the 970s band Tully in the style of a rock opera. 'Matt McMahon has completely rewritten the composition. It's amazing what he does. He works out what the chords are and what features of the original to retain and what to play around with and just arranges specifically for Tim [...]."

"ON the occasion of the great Tasmanian and Australian composer's 80th birthday comes the third in a series by the Goldner Quartet of Sculthorpe's quartets. These are works written since 1998. String Quartet No. 14 is a reflection of Sculthorpe's early years growing up in northern Tasmania. It is brooding and somber music. As is the 15th quartet, which is influenced by the sounds of New Guinea. The quartets 16 and 17 are recently composed works, although the former, with its overlay of bird noises, is a reminder of Sculthorpe's experiments in that regard in the late 1960s. This is worthy birthday present."

"[Robert Helpmann] brought immeasurable prestige to the Australian Ballet when he led it from 1965 to 1975. If you want to gauge his variety of Australian masculinity then The Display, his lyrebird ballet of eroticism, and Sun Music, to Peter Sculthorpe's music, might be said to have anticipated the eroticism and campery of Mardi Gras and Baz Luhrmann."

"Peter Sculthorpe celebrated his 80th birthday in April, and this recording of his four most recent numbered string quartets was released to mark the occasion. He has been the leading Australian composer of his generation; his works manage to evoke his country's extraordinary landscapes while never shrinking from its social issues. So the 14th Quartet is subtitled Quamby, and evokes not only the Tasmania in which Sculthorpe grew up, but also its brutal colonial past: it identifies a place where Aborigines were massacred. The 15th looks across the Torres Strait to New Guinea, incorporating song sequences and scales from a local tribe; the 16th is designed as an appeal for justice for Australia's asylum seekers; the 17th is more personal, and incorporates the motto from the last of Beethoven's 17 quartets, Op 135. Yet the soundworld of all these works is identifiably Sculthorpe's own, with its highly wrought, often densely chordal string writing lit up by sudden scatters of harmonics, like cascades of birdsong, and all superbly delivered by the Goldner Quartet.

"UPDATING the recorded chamber music of Australia's most famous classical composer, the Goldner experts perform four works on this Tall Poppies CD, beginning with the 1998 Quartet No. 14, Quamby, written to commemorate the fate of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. The series continues with No. 15, which uses material from New Guinea, while the next, commissioned by Julian Burnside and focused on Australia's disastrous treatment of asylum seekers, was premiered in Melbourne by the Tokyo String Quartet. Sculthorpe's latest in the form, No. 17, is the most rigorous, based on Beethoven's Muss es sein motto. All four comprise a must-have for any devotee of serious, accessible Australian music."

Madrid, 15 Jul (EFE).- Spain's international news agency Efe and Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe were announced Wednesday as recipients of the 2009 Casa Asia Award for their contributions to the fostering of dialogue, harmony and understanding between Spanish society and those of the Asia-Pacific region [...] Regarding Sculthorpe, the composer of the 1982 opera Quiros, based on the subject of Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandez Quiros, Casa Asia bestowed the award 'for integrating into his brilliant musical career the rapprochement between cultures and emphasizing the historical links between Spain and the Pacific.' The panel of judges met on Wednesday in Madrid and is comprised of representatives from the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the city halls of Barcelona and Madrid, the Business Confederation of Madrid and other institutions."

"Each piece produced at least one shining moment [...] a clean glaze of discords piercing Sculthorpe's second Sonata for Strings [...]."

GOLDNER String Quartet's project to record all the quartets by Peter Sculthorpe is brought up to date in this third instalment, covering 1998 to the present. There are four works, String Quartets No.14-17, and all are recorded here for the first time. One hears a composer who has found his most natural voice in the string quartet medium. These later quartets have a distilled character: textures are cleanly formed and melodies are tunefully simple, at times impassioned. Big sociopolitical themes sparked these works. Quartet No.14 (Quamby) is Sculthorpe's response to folkloric stories from the 19th century about the massacre of Aborigines in northern Tasmania. It broils with intensified emotion. The more prayerful Quartet No.15 laments the dispersal of the Simori people from their homeland in New Guinea. Haunting and anguished, Quartet No.16 was triggered by the plight of asylum-seekers in Australian detention centres. Composed in 2007, the more abstract Quartet No.17 is the most satisfying of the four. Quoting a theme of Beethoven, it has an expansiveness and musical complexity that seems to open the door more on the composer's inner self. Flowing, unforced musicianship from the Goldner players allows them to unlock fully the spirit of this music. Their playing is eloquent, human-faced and expressive."

"To celebrate Tognetti's 20 years of ACO leadership composer Peter Sculthorpe has written a new work, Chaconne for Solo Violin and Strings. 'In Peter Sculthorpe we have the most reputable, respected and reasonable of all composers,' Tognetti says. 'It's a blessing to have him. Peter's our first nationalist composer of note.' Sculthorpe says he would have preferred to write a longer piece. 'The piece is so short. Only three minutes. I would have liked to write a longer piece, but that's what I was commissioned to write. I enjoy writing popular music from time to time and I think that almost all the violinists I know would like to be rock stars,' he laughs. 'Therefore the strings play rather in the style of Bach but the violin solo Richard plays in the style of a rock ballad. But I wrote the accompaniment in the style of Bach because he's one of both my and Richard's favourite composers. Oh, and because Bach's Chaconne is in D minor, mine, too, is in D minor.' Sculthorpe has observed the convention of using a dotted beat but in an interesting variation has written this on the third rather than the second beat. 'When Richard came back to the ACO in 1989 I'd been commissioned to write a guitar concerto for John Williams so at the very first rehearsal Richard was there with John Williams and Richard Hickox was conducting so there's a lot of sentimental attachment to this group,' he says.

"AN eminent Australian composer has voiced opposition to plans to demolish the Keith Ford Hall to make way for a proposed expansion of the Brunswick Baths. Sydney-based composer and national living treasure Peter Sculthorpe, who composed some of his earliest string quartets at the hall in the 1940s, said the move would be a blow to Melbourne's music history. In his biography, Mr Sculthorpe, 80, recalled how over three years as a young Melbourne Conservatorium student he composed most of his work on a 'fairly miserable upright piano' in the 'spartan' hall. The composer, best known for works such as Kakadu and Earth Cry, gave his first Melbourne performance at the old hall. Mr Sculthorpe said it would be sad to see such an important piece of history knocked down. 'It was a dedicated band hall for the Brunswick Municipal Band (now the Moreland City Band),' he told the Leader last week. 'It seems to me it would be a loss.' "

"'LIVING treasure' Peter Sculthorpe is our best-known classical composer and his influence on Australian music is immeasurable. I was lucky enough to hear the premiere of the 16th by the Tokyo Quartet in Musica Viva's 2005 season. Commissioned by human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, it is a powerful and moving indictment against the Howard government's policy on asylum seekers, inspired by detainees' letters. Sculthorpe's love of Aboriginal chants, native bird calls and south-east Asian music are all in evidence in the other works. He even pays tribute to Beethoven in his latest quartet, the 17th a change of heart from his declaration in 1967 'I never want to hear another note of Beethoven in my life'''.

"The Canberra audience was also treated to the world premiere of a new piece by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, Chaconne. The piece was commissioned to celebrate Tognetti's 20th anniversary as leader of the Australia Chamber Orchestra."

"RESONANCE is the title for the Australian Chamber Orchestra's tour that began in Canberra on Saturday evening, prefaced by another miniature from octogenarian Peter Sculthorpe to celebrate Richard Tognetti's 20 years as artistic director. The plaintive, almost Russian mood of Sculthorpe's Chaconne is saved from turning to syrup by straining towards a climax. Despite being contemporary, the piece sounds like a ghost from the late 19th century."

"Sculthorpe's Chaconne, commissioned by the ACO to celebrate Richard Tognetti's 20th Anniversary Season, was a fitting opening piece with its lyrical triplet figures and sustained pedal notes preparing the listener for an evening of music calculated to provoke deep thought and stimulate inquiry."

"MUSICIAN Gabriella Smart could not have hoped for a better way to lead up to the 2009 OzAsia Festival than a major award for her 2008 OzAsia work [...] Smart curated the winning piece which featured the music of composer Peter Sculthorpe.
'It was enough of a privilege to be nominated for last year's OzAsia work, but to win . . . it's just great,'' the Malvern pianist says. Smart says Australians are 'greatly influenced' by their Asian neighbours. 'From Asian cuisine to decorating and music, it's all around us. Sculthorpe was strongly influenced by Japanese and Indonesian music and philosophy and that's what this festival is about - our Asian connection. I believe that this festival just continues to blossom.'"

"The concert began with Peter Sculthorpe's desperately beautiful Chaconne, newly commissioned to celebrate Tognetti's 20 years with ACO. This work suits Tognetti's style perfectly and he phrased the lyrical solo line with warm human naturalness."

"Peter Sculthorpe's respectful Chaconne, celebrating Richard Tognetti's 20th anniversary as leader, led smoothly into a second tribute from one musician to another, Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis, by Vaughan Williams."

"Peter Sculthorpe's Chaconne, a premiere performance, was a short neo-Baroque remembrance of Bach, as might be used in a film scene. It could tolerate greater extension."

[Antony Gray, The Firm, Pilgrim Church, Monday]: "PIANIST Antony Gray, Australian born, now London resident, is just the sort of challenging performer for Adelaide's in-house composers group The Firm [...] Mainstream works by Malcolm Williamson and Peter Sculthorpe rounded out this fulsome and thought-provoking recital."

"Composer Peter Sculthorpe has described the sudden death of pianist Geoffrey Tozer as 'an enormous loss for the Country'. Tributes have been flowing in steadily for Tozer, who died of liver disease at his home in Melbourne last Thursday, aged 54. He spent some of his life in Canberra, teaching and performing regularly with staff at the ANU School of Music. 'I was devastated when I heard,' Sculthorpe said. 'I'd known him all his life. I was aware he was unwell but I didn't know the circumstances.' [...]"

"Equally gripping was wonderful violinist Alexandra Wood, whose [...] splendid solo recital in St Michael's Church, Discoed, [...] included an atmospheric depiction of the Australian bush in Peter Sculthorpe's Irkanda I [...]"

"I woke up feeling re-energised and resensitised with the world enriched by Wednesday night's Canberra Symphony concert. Nicholas Milton conducted superbly and the orchestra approached the contrasting program with inspired musicality. A new version of Peter Sculthorpe's work Port Essington opened the concert and Milton's clever innovation of the additional bird songs combined with string sounds played from the back of the auditorium increased the drama of the narrative and allowed the music to encompass the audience. Leading the string trio, Barbara Gilby gave emotional depth to the salon-style music. In contrast, the larger string ensemble led by Philippa Thompson played the subversive counter melodies creating an engaging dialogue between new and old world musics. Sculthorpe was greeted with respectful affection by audience and orchestra. It has been a memorable year in which so much widespread attention has been given to our leading composers Sculthorpe at 80 and Larry Sitsky at 75 recognising that Australia has a distinctive musical culture of which we are proud."

"Playing 'weird music in weird places' -for the Del SOL Quartet it's not just a job . . . its a mission! 'We like to think we are pushing the boundaries of what a string quartet can and will do [...] We've even performed with a didgeridoo player. That was interesting.' That latter project was String Quartet No. 16, a very political piece by Tanzanian [recte Tasmanian] composer Peter Sculthorpe, who was inspired by letters from Afghan refugees interned in Australia. The piece is typical of the Del Sols in that, as with the Kronos Quartet, the music makes clear the musicians' intentions to blend their art with social messages. In recent years, the Del Sols have stepped up the effort, commissioning music that emphasizes the social and political issues the composers feel most passionate about."

"MATTHEW Hindson's Septet - commissioned for the 2009 Sydney Symphony Fellowship Program and dedicated to composer Peter Sculthorpe in his 80th birthday year was a worthy focal point for the fellowship concert in the Verbrugghen Hall."

"Late last Friday afternoon, Professor Kim Walker, dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, was cleared of the allegation that she had deliberately misrepresented her academic qualifications [...] Beyond the sandstone walls, the composer Peter Sculthorpe joined artist Margaret Olley in approving the decision and praising Walker. Elsewhere others expressed anger and outrage [...] Olley says she has found the animus directed towards Walker unfathomable. [...] Sculthorpe agrees that Walker is broadening the reach of the Con. He also said her fund-raising, for which she has a name, makes petty the accusations of those who work with her. "Her achievement is enormous," he says. "I believe admissions are up. Donations have been phenomenal. She's brought in the composers from overseas. Works of art are now hung in the Conservatorium. Music is clearly her life, and I really admire her strength of character - the way she has withstood the most petty but virulent criticism. Most of us would have buckled under. "To get a person with such musical experience who also has experience in academic administration is a very hard thing to find - it's like gold to find someone of this wealth of experience. And we only have to hear Kim play to think: 'Wow! We are so glad she is our dean.' "