Australia’s Jindyworobak Composers examines the music of a historically and artistically significant group of Australian composers active during the later post-colonial period (1930s–c. 1960). These composers sought to establish a uniquely Australian identity through the evocation of the country’s landscape and environment, including notably the use of Aboriginal elements or imagery in their music, texts, dramatic scenarios or ‘programmes’. Nevertheless, it must be observed that this word was originally adopted as a manifesto for an Australian literary movement, and was, for the most part, only retrospectively applied by commentators (rather than the composers themselves) to art music that was seen to share similar aesthetic aims. Chapter One demonstrates to what extent a meaningful relationship may or may not be discernible between the artistic tenets of Jindyworobak writers and apparently likeminded composers. In doing so, it establishes the context for a full exploration of the music of Australian composers to whom ‘Jindyworobak’ has come to be popularly applied. The following chapters explore the music of composers writing within the Jindyworobak period itself and, finally, the later twentieth-century afterlife of Jindyworobakism. This will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers of Ethnomusicology, Australian Music and Music History.

The Symphony remained a major orchestral form in Australia between 1960 and 2020, with a body of diverse and interesting symphonies produced during the 1960s and 1970s that defied the widespread modernist trends of serialism, electronic music and indeterminism that seemed harbingers of the symphony’s demise. From the late 1970s onwards, many Australian composers chose to work in styles that admitted modal and tonal melodic and harmonic elements with regular pulse. Major cycles of symphonies by Carl Vine, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards began to appear in the late 1980s. Other prolific symphonists like Paul Paviour (10 symphonies), David Morgan (15 symphonies), Philip Bracanin (11), Peter Tahourdin (5), John Polglase (5) and many others demonstrated a revived interest in the form. This trend continued into the first two decades of the present century with symphonies by Matthew Hindson, Katy Abbott, Stuart Greenbaum, Andrew Schultz, Mark Isaacs and Gordon Kerry. This renewed interest in the symphony reflects similar trends in Britain and the United States. Rhoderick McNeill provides a comprehensive introduction to this large body of music with the aim of making the music and its composers known to concert- goers, music educators and students, conductors and music entrepreneurs.

Australia offers tremendous scope for understanding the relationship between music, spirituality and landscape. This major, generously-illustrated new volume examines, in fifteen chapters, some of the ways in which composers and performers have attempted to convey a sense of the Australian landscape through musical means. The book embraces the different approaches of ethnomusicology, gender studies, musical analysis, performance studies and cultural history. Ranging across the country, from remote parts of the Northern Territory to the bustling east coast cities, from Tasmanian wilderness to tropical Queensland, the book includes references to art and literature as well as music. Issues of national identity, belonging and aboriginalization are an integral part of the book, with indigenous responses to place examined alongside music from the western orchestral, chamber and choral repertories. The book provides valuable insight into a wide range of music inspired by Australia, from the Yanyuwa people to Jewish communities in Victoria; from Peter Sculthorpe's opera Quiros to the work of European expats living in Australia before the Second World War; from historic Ealing film scores to contemporary sound installations. The work of many significant composers is discussed in detail, among them Ross Edwards, Barry Conyngham, David Lumsdaine, Anne Boyd and Fritz Hart. Throughout the book there is a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of the music inspired by the sights and sounds of the Australian landscape.

The symphony retained its primacy as the most prestigious large-scale orchestral form throughout the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in Britain, Russia and the United States. Likewise, Australian composers produced a steady stream of symphonies throughout the period from Federation (1901) through to the end of the 1950s. Stylistically, these works ranged from essays in late nineteenth-century romanticism, twentieth-century nationalism, neo-classicism and near-atonality. Australian symphonies were most prolific during the 1950s, with 36 local entries in the 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee Symphony competition. This extensive repertoire was overshadowed by the emergence of a new generation of composers and critics during the 1960s who tended to regard older Australian music as old-fashioned and derivative. The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 is the first study of this neglected genre and has four aims: firstly, to show the development of symphonic composition in Australia from Federation to 1960; secondly, to highlight the achievement of the main composers who wrote symphonies; thirdly, to advocate the restoration and revival of this repertory; and, lastly, to take a step towards a recasting of the narrative of Australian concert music from Federation to the present. In particular, symphonies by Marshall-Hall, Hart, Bainton, Hughes, Le Gallienne and Morgan emerge as works of particular note.

Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.

Music in Religious Cults of the Ancient Near East presents the first extended discussion of the relationship between music and cultic worship in ancient western Asia. The book covers ancient Israel and Judah, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Elam, and ancient Egypt, focusing on the period from approximately 3000 BCE to around 586 BCE. This wide-ranging book brings together insights from ancient archaeological, iconographic, written, and musical sources, as well as from modern scholarship. Through careful analysis, comparison, and evaluation of those sources, the author builds a picture of a world where religious culture was predominant and where music was intrinsic to common cultic activity.

There can be little doubt that opera and emotion are inextricably linked. From dramatic plots driven by energetic producers and directors to the conflicts and triumphs experienced by all associated with opera’s staging to the reactions and critiques of audience members, emotion is omnipresent in opera. Yet few contemplate the impact that the customary cultural practices of specific times and places have upon opera’s ability to move emotions. Taking Australia as a case study, this two-volume collection of extended essays demonstrates that emotional experiences, discourses, displays and expressions do not share universal significance but are at least partly produced, defined, and regulated by culture. Spanning approximately 170 years of opera production in Australia, the authors show how the emotions associated with the specific cultural context of a nation steeped in egalitarian aspirations and marked by increasing levels of multiculturalism have adjusted to changing cultural and social contexts across time. Volume I adopts an historical, predominantly nineteenth-century perspective, while Volume II applies historical, musicological, and ethnological approaches to discuss subsequent Australian operas and opera productions through to the twenty-first century. With final chapters pulling threads from the two volumes together, Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes establishes a model for constructing emotion history from multiple disciplinary perspectives.