Photo © Jim Newman

Peter Sculthorpe is an original voice in Australian music, combining an eclectic and constantly-evolving style rooted in classic forms with an intense interest in the indigenous music of his native land and the Pacific Rim. His determination to document in sound the socio-environmental character of Australia has made Sculthorpe the country’s best-known composer and “the voice of the nation”. Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1929, Sculthorpe was educated at Launceston Church Grammar School, the University of
Melbourne and Wadham College, Oxford. He was composer-in-residence at Yale University while visiting the United States as a Harkness Fellow in 1966-67, and Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex in 1972-73. Appointed Reader in Music at the University of Sydney in the late Sixties, he is now Professor in Musical Composition (Personal Chair) at that university. Sculthorpe has earned appointments as an Officer of the British Empire, Officer of the Order of Australia, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Lifetime Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition, he has been the recipient of many awards and prizes for his works, including Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Tasmania and Sussex, the Honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of Melbourne, a Silver Jubilee Medal, the Sir Bernard Heinze Award for outstanding services to Australian music, an Australian Film Industry Award for best original film score (Manganinnie) and the 1985 APRA Award for most performed Australian serious work (Piano Concerto).
www.nla.gov.au/epubs/sculthorpe/