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7 - An Early Australian Musical Modernism

from Part II - Encounters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Kate Bowan
Edited by
Amanda Harris  and
Clint Bracknell
Amanda Harris
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Clint Bracknell
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
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Summary

Modernist art music of the interwar period takes its place among other early Australian musical modernisms. It developed within an antipodean modernity transformed by new technologies of transport and communication. Mobility – the movement of people, scores, print journalism and recordings – is central here. Using a conceptual framework informed by transnational historical approaches and expanded understandings of the unsettled and contested concept of modernism, this chapter provides a more generous reading of this musical moment long obscured by the concerns and anxieties of a young nation negotiating its complicated ties to Britain and continental Europe while searching for a distinctive culture. After tracing the emergence of a modernist musical discourse in Australia’s popular press, this chapter looks at the output of a group of composers and various forms of modernist musicking to reveal a transnational community of Australian musicians who actively participated in what can be understood as a modernist music world.

Keywords

Early Australian modernismmodernist musicantipodean modernitymobilitytransnational historyradiosyndicated presscolonial cosmopolitanismAustralian music
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia , pp. 111 - 129
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Carter, D., Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2013).Google Scholar
Carter, D., ‘“How It Strikes a Contemporary”: Modernism and Modernity in Australia, 1920s–1930s’, Pacific and American Studies, 18 (2018), 85–79.Google Scholar
Collins, D., Sounds from the Stables: The Story of Sydney’s Conservatorium (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001).Google Scholar
Crews, R. and J. Carrigan, , Breaking the Drought: Roy Agnew: Composer, Pianist, Teacher (Wollongong: Wirripang, 2022).Google Scholar
Huyssen, A., ‘Geographies of Modernism in a Globalizing World’, New German Critique, 100 (2007), 189–207.Google Scholar
Russoniello, J., ‘A History in Blue Pencil: Cyril Monk’s Performance Annotations and a Bygone Musical Style’, Musicology Australia, 44 (2022), 79–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmonds, A., A. Rees, and A. Clark, (eds.), Transnationalism, Nationalism and Australian History (Singapore: Springer, 2017).Google Scholar
Wollaeger, M. and M. Eatough, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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