ABSTRACT

The composer Peter Sculthorpe has contributed to the formation of Australia's cultural identity for over 40 years, primarily through his captivating music but also through his teaching, writing, and speaking. Most generally, he explains his music as a response to his experience of being Australian. He notes that particular features of his music reflect the contours of the Australian continent. These include a flatness and elongation of melodic shape, a pervasive repetitiveness of motive and a slow rate of harmonic change. Sculthorpe has often observed that Australia lacks a philosophical 'school' or ideological framework for the creative artist, 'the composer is forced to create his own view of himself as a composer and as an Australian'. In illuminating the intellectual basis of his art, he cites the books, paintings, artefacts, architecture and ideas that seem to him to point to the essence of the country.