The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Victoria Rogers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351542227
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) is an Australian composer whose full significance has only recently been appreciated. Born in Melbourne, Australia, she transcended the gendered expectations of her upbringing and went on to become a fine composer and a highly influential figure in the vibrant musical life of New York after the Second World War. Following early composition studies with Fritz Hart in Melbourne, Glanville-Hicks moved to London where she studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, then to Paris where she was taught by the great pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. Her migration to the USA in 1941 shaped the musical direction of her late works. After a brief neoclassical phase, she joined the small group of American composers who were using non-Western musics as their inspirational well-spring, including Colin McPhee, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison and Paul Bowles. During this period she also forged an illustrious career as a music journalist and arts administrator, working tirelessly to promote new music and the careers of young composers. In the late 1950s she retreated to Greece to write 'the big works', most notably the operas which lie at the heart of her creative output. Her compositional career ended prematurely, and tragically, in 1967 following surgery the previous year for a life-threatening brain tumour. Against all medical expectations she went on to live for a further 24 years, returning to Australia in 1975 amidst a dawning recognition that one of the country's most significant composers had returned. Glanville-Hicks's career as a composer is impressive by any measure. She produced over 70 finely-crafted works, including operas, ballets, concertos, instrumental chamber pieces, songs and choral works. The story of her life has been told in the biographies. This book traces the development of her musical language from the English pastoral style of the early works, through the neoclassicism of the middle period, to the melody-rhythm concept of the late works,

Chapter 1
The early years in Melbourne

On the 20th of august 1961, a new opera was performed at the ancient herod Atticus Theatre in Athens. The theatre was filled to overflowing, and an enthusiastic audience greeted the opera with a ten-minute standing ovation. Nausicaa had been five years in the making, and its staging was a triumph for its creator, the composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks. From unlikely beginnings in Australia and defying innumerable obstacles along the way, she had scaled the peak of an international première in that most demanding of art forms – opera. On her right sat the famous poet, novelist and now librettist robert graves; on her left was the renowned American choreographer-director John Butler. With an international contingent of music critics and an audience that read as a ‘Who’s Who’ of greek music and society, this was, without doubt, the pinnacle of Glanville-Hicks’s career. How she was able to accomplish what most could only dream of was a story that had begun almost 50 years earlier.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks¹ was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 29 December 1912. Her father, ernest, was an Englishman who had emigrated to new Zealand as an anglican minister.² he subsequently settled in Melbourne, where he left the church, and from 1923 to his retirement in 1948 worked as the organizing secretary of the lord Mayor’s fund, a body which raised money for hospitals and charities. This was a cause to which, it would seem, he had a genuine commitment, and he was determined to channel the funds of large organizations ‘to the good of humankind’.³ He had a ‘flair for coaxing reluctant pennies from their hiding places for the good of the community’,⁴ and by 1932 the fund had grown from an income of £25,000 p.a. To £107,000 p.a.⁵ a man of multiple talents, he was also a poet, editor, journalist and soldier,⁶ and was so well regarded in the community as to be awarded the order of the British empire (oBe) for his fundraising work.

Glanville-Hicks’s mother Myrtle (née king) was born in new Zealand, although her family also came originally from England. She was a ‘highly creative person’ whose ceramics had won prizes in the Melbourne show.⁷ in addition to her ceramic ability she possessed, according to her son Beric, ‘an outstanding voice’ and ‘played the piano like a concert pianist’.⁸ Myrtle was, it would seem, the source of Peggy’s musical talent. She first met Ernest in New Zealand; they met again later in Melbourne and it was there that they were married.⁹

The marriage of ernest and Myrtle produced three children, of whom Peggy was the second. The eldest, Tregarthen (garth), became an architect who enlisted during the second World War, working in the engineering department of the Australian infantry forces (aif). To Peggy’s profound grief he died in 1943 whilst engaged in ‘experimental exercises’ with his unit at Wagga, in new south Wales.¹⁰ The youngest child, Beric, was five years younger than Peggy. He became a doctor who subsequently specialized in radiology.

The early familial environment fostered many talents in Glanville-Hicks. From her father she gained the skills and ‘savoir faire’ that were to enable her, three decades later, to become a successful fundraiser for performances of new music in new york, a role she performed with distinction in the 1940s and 1950s. From her mother, it would seem, came not only her musical talent but also the sense of ‘purposeful ambition’¹¹ that drove her from Australia to centres of musical excellence in london, Paris and new york in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her religious predilections, however, can be seen as a reaction to her upbringing. She did not share her father’s belief in a christian god,¹² and in later life she set out her own belief system in a profound personal manifesto entitled ‘This i Believe’.¹³ Commissioned by cBs radio as part of a series entitled ‘This i Believe: Presenting the Personal Philosophies of Thoughtful Men and Women in all Walks of life’, Glanville-Hicks presented her philosophy on air in 1954. Her way of seeing the world was a broadly based spiritual philosophy that derived more from eastern than from Western religious traditions, and her focus on individual morality and inner growth explains the lack of fear that she was to show in the face of a life-threatening illness in the mid-1960s.

I believe that there is a set of infallible laws operating throughout the universe, which maintain poise; poise being the point of balance and integration that ensures eternal continuity.

These laws encompass everything we know, and extend far beyond what we know – or can know, preserving their same quality and infallibility. They are manifest cosmically in the most abstract way, also applying to the human nature in matters of ethical morality, justice, and other factors inherent in human beings and which are above purely rational explanation ...

I believe that behind these laws, which exist in motion, is a great truth, which includes motion but which is itself stationary; and behind that, dimly perceived there seems to be an even greater stillness which partakes of the quality of sheer intelligence ...

Once perceived, this Truth transforms the whole being, conditioning the conduct thereafter in alignment with its laws; creativity, service, anonymity, detachment, moral courage are among its dictates …¹⁴

Glanville-Hicks’s study of music began in 1919 when, at the age of seven, she commenced piano lessons. Such musical training was an accepted part of a middle-class upbringing – and the Glanville-Hicks family was an entrenched and respected member of middle-class Melbournian society. Her education, too, followed the dictates of her class, with school days spent at two exclusive schools for girls: first the Methodist Ladies’ College, between the ages of 9 and 13,¹⁵ then clyde, an elite anglican boarding school at Mount Macedon, outside Melbourne. Clyde was the training ground for young women who were being groomed to marry the next generation of Australian leaders; there were few other career prospects for ‘well-to-do young ladies in Australia in the 1920s’.¹⁶ By this time, however, Glanville-Hicks had developed other ambitions: she had decided to become a composer. This ambition was fuelled at the age of 15 when her mother arranged for her to study composition at the albert street conservatorium, with no less than the director himself, fritz hart (1874–1949). It was to be a life-changing and career-defining move. A substantial part of Melbourne’s musical life in the 1920s centred on the albert street conservatorium,¹⁷ and for the first time Glanville-Hicks found herself in a deeply artistic environment. Hart was well placed to develop her burgeoning talents and she gained a solid grounding in the basics of composition. An Englishman, a prolific composer – particularly of opera and song – and a friend of gustav holst (1874–1934) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), hart was also a staunch advocate of the resurgent, post-elgarian English style of the early twentieth century, generally known as the English pastoral style. He considered it ‘absolutely impossible for a school of Australian creative music to arise that [was] not founded directly upon British music’,¹⁸ and he ran the albert street conservatorium accordingly.¹⁹ This early musical training was to reverberate through to Glanville-Hicks’s very late works.

British music dominated the musical life of 1920s Melbourne, and the proselytizing of fritz hart was not the only reason. Whilst the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 had brought a measure of independence from England, the newly created nation of Australia was a constitutional monarchy, not a republic, and the political, economic and emotional ties with England remained strong. The British monarch ‘retained the same reserve powers over federal legislation as hitherto over colonial’,²⁰ exports of Australian primary produce to England underpinned the post-federation Australian economy, and England continued to be viewed sentimentally as the ‘mother country’. There was, too, a major influx of British migrants in the 1920s. Encouraged by the new Prime Minister, stanley Bruce, 200,000 British migrants came to Australia over the course of this decade, further reinforcing the bond between the fledgling nation and Britain. The First World War also served to strengthen the old ties. The Australian government had been unequivocal in its commitment to the war, the liberal Prime Minister Joseph cook declaring that ‘all our resources in Australia are in the empire and for the empire’ – although Australia was in any case ‘constitutionally bound to follow Britain’.²¹ anti-german feeling both during and after the war was all-encompassing, so much so that a new south Wales parliamentarian went so far as to propose a total ban on the playing of Teutonic music.²² The war and the anti-german feeling that it engendered, as well as Australia’s continuing attachment to Britain, fed into the post-war movement that fostered the performance of British music.

The formation of the British Music society further fuelled the growth of British music in 1920s Melbourne. Various musical organizations already existed and the musical life of the city was by no means impoverished. The victorian liedertafel, established by Melbourne’s german immigrant population, had for several decades presented concerts of choral music; the Music society of victoria offered chamber music recitals; the popular brass band movement had done much to cultivate community music making; and community singing was well established. There were also concerts of symphonic music, mostly presented by the Melbourne symphony orchestra, which was, in the 1920s, of amateur status and standard. It was to be a further decade before the Australian Broadcasting commission (later corporation) established professional aBc studio orchestras and subscription concert series in most of the Australian states, including Melbourne.²³ Music making of a high standard was provided, however, by a constant flow of visiting artists. With vastly improved sea travel, such international celebrities as Paderewski and kreisler were attracted to concert tours of the antipodes,²⁴ and Melbourne’s musical life was considerably enriched by these events.

Nonetheless, the city’s musical inadequacies were a source of concern to some. During the war Dame nellie Melba had denounced her home town for its lack of a professional orchestra and opera company;²⁵ the absence of an organization that could promote the music of the mother country was seen by others as a significant lack. In 1921, louise Dyer²⁶ – a pillar of well-to-do Melbourne society, passionate music lover and later music publisher²⁷ – was instrumental in forming a victorian branch of the British Music society. The main aim of the society was to spread knowledge of British music; other aims included the encouragement of Australian composers (who were seen as British), the provision of BMs facilities to Australian musicians abroad, and fostering the spirit of international music.²⁸ The definition of ‘British’ music encompassed not only contemporary British composers such as vaughan Williams, Delius and holst, but also reclaimed elizabethan choral music and earlier composers such as the fifteenth-century English composer John Dunstable. Within the resurgence of British music, vocal music, and particularly the English art song, flourished, and concerts organized by the Brit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The early years in Melbourne
• 2 The student years: london and Paris
• 3 To New York
• 4 Towards a new Musical Philosophy
• 5 The new Musical Philosophy in Practice
• 6 The Transposed Heads
• 7 From The Transposed Heads to Nausicaa
• 8 Nausicaa
• 9 From Nausicaa to Australia
• List of References
• List of Compositions
• Index