ABSTRACT
Alongside the emerging Australian modernist music of the 1960s, composers active previously in the 1940s and 1950s composed symphonies, thus demonstrating the stylistic diversity of the 1960s–1970s period in Australia. Dorian Le Gallienne completed the first movement only of his second symphony in the last months of his life in a leaner and more astringent idiom than his Symphony in E minor (1953). Clive Douglas adapted serial principles in his four-movement Symphony No.3 (1963), a major departure from his previous Romantic and Nationalist idiom. Dulcie Holland’s three-movement Symphony for Pleasure (1972), composed for an amateur orchestra, demonstrates aspects of traditional sonata principles and neo-classicism. In 1971, Robert Hughes revised his Symphony No.1 (from 1951), adding a new slow movement and radically rewriting the first and final movements, resulting in a tightly constructed work of real power and dynamism. James Penberthy’s Symphony No.6 ‘Earth Mother’ includes Australian Indigenous materials and some balletic features. William Lovelock’s one movement Symphony in C sharp minor (1966) recalls British and European late Romanticism and Impressionism. Viennese-born Eric Gross’s two symphonies mix British early twentieth-century idioms with German post-romanticism and neo-classicism.
