Peter Sculthorpe is a composer whose life has been dedicated to expressing his Australian heritage and perspective through music. His contribution to Australian society was acknowledged in 1998 when, by popular vote, he was elected one of Australia’s 100 Living National Treasures. In April this year, he joined the ranks of A.D. Hope, Sidney Nolan and Christina Stead as the only Australians to be made life members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Such an honour in the international sphere indicates the way in which his local, specific music speaks also of the universal and global. This month, the National Library of Australia formally received his vast collection of personal papers and artworks. The Sculthorpe Papers are a remarkable acquisition, as Manuscript Librarian Graeme Powell explains, because of the ‘conjunction of Australia’s most famous living composer and a wonderful collection of papers. The conjunction is so rare. The great collections of papers have usually been kept by people who aren’t so famous, and most famous people often aren’t so good at keeping papers.’ This exceptional collection captures the composer’s life and work, and provides a window into the wider artistic community of which he is a part. Sculthorpe is by nature a collector, a characteristic inherited from both his parents. His home is decorated with the many objects and artworks he has gathered over the years. He began collecting newspaper cuttings and other items about himself and his music in his teens when he started giving piano performances in Launceston. This personal record was initially collected with only himself in mind. He reflected recently, however, that when National Librarian, Harold White, first approached him about his papers in 1970, ‘it suddenly made it feel it was all worthwhile that I had collected all these years’.
Whereas the majority of good collections tend to start in middle age, once a person has established him or herself, the Sculthorpe Papers include substantial documentation of his early years. Born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1929, Sculthorpe was severely reprimanded by his first piano teacher for returning to her, not with well-practised pieces, but with a handful of original compositions. Consequently, the seven-year-old Sculthorpe took to writing music under the bedclothes with a torch for some time. His parents were supportive when they discovered him, and later transferred him to a teacher who encouraged his writing. As a child, he pursued not only music, but also literature and drawing as well. Thus, in the collection, his juvenile scores are accompanied by examples of his poems and artwork from this period. In his early teens, however, he realised that, whereas his poems and drawings drew heavily on the work of poets and artists he admired, his compositions said something about himself. It was at this early age that he decided to be a composer. Aged 16, he went to Melbourne University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in piano in 1950. Returning to Launceston, he was unable to find a sustaining music job, and so agreed to start a sports shop with his brother, Roger. A breakthrough came in 1955 when his Piano Sonatina (1954), based on an Aboriginal legend, was the first work of a resident Australian chosen for performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Baden-Baden. Then in 1958, he was awarded the Lizette Bentwich Scholarship by the University of Melbourne, which allowed him to undertake postdoctoral studies at Oxford. There he studied composition with Edmund Rubbra and Egon Wellesz, and came into contact with contemporaries such as Peter Maxwell Davies and John Cage. Rather than adopting an English or European style, however, the experience raised his awareness of his uniquely Australian perspective. Sculthorpe returned to Australia in 1960, and in 1963 accepted the first appointment in composition at the University of Sydney’s Music Department, in which position he mentored the next generation of composers, including Anne Boyd, Ross Edwards, and Barry Conyngham. Sculthorpe regards his students as his extended family. He has consistently encouraged students to find their own voice and is excited about the variety of styles he sees being expressed by young Australian composers today as a result of Australia’s multicultural diversity. His ongoing commitment to music in Australia is demonstrated by his intention to establish a trust fund for young Australian musicians who share this vision. Another defining moment came with the first performance of Irkanda IV, written in 1961 following the death of his father. The acclaim this work received established him internationally and, in his words, ‘gave him the courage to continue’. In 1965, the London music publisher, Faber, approached him about joining its list of composers. Sculthorpe’s correspondence with Faber provides a wealth of insight into this successful business relationship and the role of music publishing in the composition process. From airmail and telegram to email and fax, from handwritten scores to photocopies and the computerised scores of Sibelius 7, it also documents the impact of technological change on the industry. This record is complemented by the complete set of Sculthorpe’s published Faber scores in the Library’s Print Music Collection.
From juvenilia such as his Adagio in Major Keys, Op. 1 Nos. 3 and 4 (c.1941–1942), to recent works such as Port Arthur: In Memoriam (1996) and Music for Federation (2001), the Sculthorpe Papers span over 50 years and are both extensive and varied. They provide a picture of Sculthorpe from his development as a young child, through his emerging sense of himself as a teenager, to the fully developed professional composer. Sculthorpe’s family contributed to the wealth of early material in the papers. At one point his brother, Roger, discovered some early scores Peter had discarded. Salvaging them from the rubbish bin, he kept them and presented them to his brother on his 21st birthday. Similarly, Sculthorpe had not realised that all his weekly letters home had survived, until they were rediscovered when sorting his mother’s estate. As well as music scores, correspondence, photographs, concert programs, reviews, and writings by and about Sculthorpe, the collection includes a large number of artworks related to the composer. The artists represented include Russell Drysdale, Judy Cassab, Greg Hocking, Les Tanner, John Coburn and Eric Smith. Viewing the collection as a whole, Robyn Holmes, the Library’s Curator of Music states:
The collection is remarkably well ordered, having been kept largely in meticulously labelled files. The organisation in the papers reflects the order and neatness in Sculthorpe’s life. He writes in his autobiography, ‘I’ve always enjoyed copying out my music, time-consuming though it is … [a] carefully presented score demonstrates care and commitment, even love.’ In the same way, his careful collecting reveals deep sentiment, as Robyn Holmes observes. Sculthorpe is a composer whose life resonates with the question of what it means to be Australian. To write overtly in his music ‘of the country and of our history’ is for him ‘a natural choice’. As he says, ‘It’s who I am, what I’m about.’ Thus, works such as Earth Cry (1986) and Kakadu (1988) reflect the breadth, vastness and loneliness of the Australian landscape, and the sounds of its wildlife. Others like Port Essington (1977), Manganinnie (1980), Burke and Wills (1985), and Eliza Fraser Sings (1978) deal with the history of European settlement. From early works like the Irkanda series (1955–1961) to recent works such as Cello Dreaming (1998), Aboriginal history, language and melody have also been sources of inspiration. His music engages the complexity inherent in the issue of Australian identity. ‘What is Australian music?’ he asks, ‘If this could be answered, I’d probably stop writing music and answer questions.’ Sculthorpe has written for the full range of musical genres, including works for orchestra, string quartet, solo instrument, voice and choir, film, theatre and opera. His music is flexible and versatile; he often rearranges a piece for different instrumental combinations. The Sculthorpe Papers include over 300 manuscript scores, the majority of which are fair copies in the composer’s hand. These will be a wonderful resource for studies of his music. For much of Sculthorpe’s composing life, the notion of dualism—a clashing of opposites until a synthesis is found—has been a driving force in both his musical technique and aesthetic. Here, the sun has been an important symbol as both a giver of life and a source of death. Sculthorpe has tenaciously chosen life, however, and his music is imbued with optimism. Many times he has expressed the view that Australia is the only place where one can still write joyful music; he sees Australia as a youthful nation whose golden age is yet to come, whose history is largely unwritten. Reacting against the European musical tradition, Sculthorpe firmly locates Australia in Asia, and has been strongly influenced by Japanese and Indonesian music and philosophy. Sculthorpe is confident in his own musical voice and in his place of origin. For him Australia is ‘the centre of the world’. Given the cultural cringe that has in many ways hindered the development of musical life in this country, it is important that a composer has been able to say this. Sculthorpe’s overt dealing with Australian themes has also increased his prominence in the international scene, where audiences are still attracted by the mystique of Australia as a far distant land. Sculthorpe’s life and work is inextricably linked to the surrounding world of artists, writers, composers and performers. He comments, ‘I couldn’t exist as a composer as an individual if it weren’t for the communal.’ He always prefers to write with a particular performer in mind and pours his knowledge and care of the person into the work. The correspondence in the Sculthorpe Papers shows the mutual encouragement and discussion that take place between Sculthorpe and his fellow artists, the exchange of ideas and triggering of inspiration across art forms. Examples are the Patrick White letters, in which White expounds the essence of A Fringe of Leaves, and grapples with the issues of setting text to music; and the strong friendship between Sculthorpe and Russell Drysdale, expressed in Drysdale’s drawings in response to Sculthorpe’s Port Essington. In this way, the Sculthorpe Papers have a wide reference, encompassing painters, writers, dancers, performers, conductors, critics and many arts-related organisations. Other correspondents include such notables as Margaret Sutherland, Don Banks, Anne Boyd, and Ross Edwards, Frank Callaway and Roger Covell, John Williams and Roger Woodward, Robert Helpmann and Peggy van Praagh, Randolph Stow and Manning Clark. Practising composition at the highest level, Sculthorpe also makes time for activities such as a commission from his local community orchestra, the Woollahra Municipal Orchestra, and answering the letters of Australian school children. His desire to see the role of music in Australian culture expand and deepen has also led him to make his music accessible through lectures and talks, interviews, articles and detailed program notes, many of which are documented in the collection. A resident of Sydney, Sculthorpe continues to be actively involved in the national and international music scene, attending festivals and performances, and teaching at summer schools, as well as composing. His music is widely performed and recorded, and he regularly receives commissions from performing groups such as the Kronos Quartet, Verdher Trio and Brodsky Quartet, as well as Australia’s major orchestras and chamber music groups. Rather than slowing down, he feels the pace of his work has increased in recent years. Thus the collection of his papers will continue to grow. Reflecting on the place of the Sculthorpe Papers in the National Library, Assistant Director-General Margy Burn notes: ‘It is really important to have these “flagship collections”, to make other people realise that this is a centre for musical research and scholarship, and resources.’ As well as broadening people’s understanding of the National Library and of libraries generally, it is hoped that the Sculthorpe acquisition may prompt other musicians to consider placing their papers for preservation in such an institution. There is a strong affinity between Sculthorpe’s desire to express his Australian identity and the ethos of the National Library, this place that seeks to document and preserve a record of who Australians are as a nation, in all the variety and even contradiction and confusion that that entails. In this place, his voice will continue to sound as part of the whole that is Australia. NAOMI VEAR is a musicology graduate from the Australian National University. She is currently working in the Library’s Manuscript Section and helped prepare the Sculthorpe Papers for the Library |
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