ABSTRACT
More progressive elements are found in the symphonies by the generation of Australian symphonists born in the 1920s and 1930s. David Morgan trained initially in Sydney then studied modernist composition techniques in the UK. His works of the 1960s include serialism and Ives-like quotation techniques. Ann Carr-Boyd completed a three-movement symphony while studying at the Royal College of Music in 1963/1964. Two lean neo-classical outer movements surround a 12-note serial and pointillist slow movement. Felix Werder’s symphonies of the 1960s remain challenging works with their complex, serial and expressionist manner, most notably in Symphony No.3 ‘Laokoon’. George Dreyfus, on the other hand, turned from his modernist early works towards a more accessible, neo-classical idiom in his Symphony No.1 of 1967, one of the finest symphonies of the period in its comedic outer movements and powerfully elegiac central slow movement. A second symphony in two movements followed in 1978. Peter Tahourdin developed from the neo-classical idiom of his Symphony No.1 (1960) towards atonal and serial elements in his Symphony No.2 (1969) and No.3 (1979). Together these approaches to the symphony form a counter-thread to the avant-garde modernism considered to be the principal achievement within Australian music of the period.
