The Soundscapes of Australia

Australia offers tremendous scope for understanding the relationship between music, spirituality and landscape. This major, generously-illustrated new volume examines, in fifteen chapters, some of the ways in which composers and performers have attempted to convey a sense of the Australian landscape through musical means. The book embraces the different approaches of ethnomusicology, gender studies, musical analysis, performance studies and cultural history. Ranging across the country, from remote parts of the Northern Territory to the bustling east coast cities, from Tasmanian wilderness to tropical Queensland, the book includes references to art and literature as well as music. Issues of national identity, belonging and aboriginalization are an integral part of the book, with indigenous responses to place examined alongside music from the western orchestral, chamber and choral repertories. The book provides valuable insight into a wide range of music inspired by Australia, from the Yanyuwa people to Jewish communities in Victoria; from Peter Sculthorpe's opera Quiros to the work of European expats living in Australia before the Second World War; from historic Ealing film scores to contemporary sound installations. The work of many significant composers is discussed in detail, among them Ross Edwards, Barry Conyngham, David Lumsdaine, Anne Boyd and Fritz Hart. Throughout the book there is a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of the music inspired by the sights and sounds of the Australian landscape.

ISBN 0754640728   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780754640721 (What's this?)   Pages 344 Publisher Ashgate Publishing Group   Volumes 001 Imprint Ashgate Publishing Limited   Published in Aldershot Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 20 Apr 2007   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress ML360.5   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY 780.994

		Introduction : spirit of place, spiritual journeys by Fiona Richards		1
1		Landscape, spirit and music : an Australian story by Anne Boyd		11
2		Colin Bright and the psyche of place by Christine Logan		35
3		Women, spirituality, landscape : the music of Anne Boyd, Sarah Hopkins and Moya Henderson by Sally Macarthur		51
4		Singing the land, singing the family : song, place and spirituality amongst the Yanyuwa by John Bradley and Elizabeth Mackinlay		75
5		Words and music : Clive Douglas and the Jindyworobak Manifesto by David Symons		93
6		A case of discontiguity : musical and cultural irony in the situation of the Lubavitch Community of Shepparton, Victoria by Kay Dreyfus and Bronia Kornhauser		117
7		Visions of the great south land in Peter Sculthorpe's Opera Quiros by Deborah Hayes		147
8		Sing a country of the mind : the articulation of place in Dhalwangu song by Peter Toner		165
9		European sounds, Australian echoes : the music of Marshall-Hall, Hill and Hart by Peter Tregear		185
10		An expatriate Englishman : Fritz Hart in Australia by Anne-Marie Forbes		199
11		Journeys across Australia : Ealing film scores of the 1940s and '50s by Fiona Richards		213
12		From Port Essington to the Himalayas : music, place and spirituality in two contemporary Australian compositions by Linda Kouvaras		229
13		To be alone : the theme of isolation in the music of Barry Conyngham by Gordon Kerry		247
14		Sonic inscriptions : sound installation and acoustic art in Australia by Ros Bandt		265
15		Spirit, place and power in Arnhem land traditional and Christian music by Fiona Magowan		281

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