10 - Conclusion

Summary

In drawing the main themes of the book together, I argue that the phrase Moerane used in 1966 in a letter to Percival Kirby – ‘the times do not permit’ – describes his life and musical output all told. He had no precedents or successors as an African composer of classical music in southern Africa during his lifetime – and for years afterwards. As a result, he was often simply not known or misrepresented. Not until the 2000s did young black South African composers of classical music emerge who had actually trained as composers. Moerane could almost be described as a ‘misfit’: he was highly trained musically in an environment – southern Africa in the twentieth century under deep apartheid – where no-one else like him existed.

One result was that he produced many works that were never performed. Among these are works whose use of tonality and harmony belong to a modernist language that no-one else in the genre of African choral composition had embraced before or understood – and which he himself was only beginning to develop. Their Sotho and Xhosa musical elements and lyrics, indeed, render them unlike any choral compositions in South Africa or other parts of the world.

It is almost impossible to imagine what motivated Moerane to continue writing music year after year in the kind of compositional vacuum in which he lived and worked. His belief in himself, despite the loneliness of his position as a composer, must have been extraordinary. Moerane could not belong to any white social groupings for attending new music performance and composition, and would not have known most of the music that was being composed by white South Africans or composers overseas. I doubt whether or he had any colleagues on an equal footing with whom he could talk about his work, either complete, or in progress, and particularly his symphonic poem. He touched base only tangentially with the white musical establishment through individuals such as Yvonne Huskisson and Percival Kirby, and could reap no benefit as a teacher from his excellent music education because he could not teach music formally in school, although he did teach it informally.