Fiona Richards
Current research projects

1 Landmarks in Music Since 1950: Peter Sculthorpe's Irkanda IV

The project examines the music and biography of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (b.1929), focusing on one landmark work, Irkanda IV, and relates this piece to a wider musical and historical context. Through Irkanda IV the project looks at the relationship between music and the Australian landscape (notably the Illawarra region of New South Wales), music and literature (D.H. Lawrence) and music and the family (Sculthorpe's childhood in Tasmania). The main outcome will be a monograph.

The main aim of the project is to examine in detail a single work by Australia's most significant 20th century composer, Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929). Written in 1961, his piece for solo violin, strings and percussion, Irkanda IV, stands as a landmark in his output. It is at once a consolidation of his musical language to that point and a new and truly Australian statement, strongly linked to landscape. The Aboriginal word ‘irkanda' means ‘remote and lonely place'. Isolation and loneliness are themes common to many Australian composers, painters and writers, and these generic concerns will be explored as part of the background to the composition. The principal objective is to study the musical language of Sculthorpe through this work and in doing so to bring a knowledge and understanding of Australian music and its connections with landscape to a wider audience.

A smaller, related part of the project, aims to consider musical representations of the Illawarra region of New South Wales, an area that has provoked a large number of musical and literary responses to the area, which will be explored alongside the Sculthorpe piece.

The outcomes are:

1. A monograph on Peter Sculthorpe for Ashgate in the Landmarks in Music Since 1950 series;
2. An article on music associated with the Illawarra region;
3. Conference papers already given:

• ‘Music and the family: Peter Sculthorpe’, Gender in the Humanities research day, Open University, October 2005
• ‘Illawarra music', RMA 42nd Annual Conference, University of Nottingham, 11-14 July 2006
• ‘Remembering Australian lives in Peter Sculthorpe's Irkanda IV’, British Australian Studies Association conference, Cornwall, 7-10 September 2006
• ‘Memories and associations in Peter Sculthorpe’s Irkanda IV’, OU Music Department Research Day, September 2007
  

2 The impact of Lutheran migration on music in Australia

This project has been awarded an AHRC Small Grant within the AHRC strategic initiative Diasporas, Migration and Identities www.diasporas.ac.uk

The project examines the impact of Lutheran migration on music in Australia, from 1836 to the present day. It looks at the import of German vocal traditions, both secular and sacred, through historic documents, study of contemporary Liedertafel performances and church services and interrogation of the influence of Lutheran missions on indigenous music. The role of Lutheran institutions in shaping choral music in Australia will be examined by looking at a selection of commissioned pieces. The works of three leading Australian composers with significant Lutheran connections, Andrew Schultz, Graeme Koehne and Ron Nagorcka, will be analysed in detail.

The impact of Lutheran migration on music in Australia (PDF file, 37 KB)

Ron Nagorcka Crow Chorale, (MP3 file, 769 KB)

Conference papers:

• ‘Travels across Australia: Journey to Horseshoe Bend’, BFE conference, University of Manchester, December 2006
• ‘The impact of Lutheran migration on music in Australia’, Music Department Research Day, Open University, October 2007
• ‘The transformation of Lutheran vocal musical ritual in South Australia’, Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, Heidelberg, September 2008

3 Conference papers and articles on the pianist and composer Helen Perkin (1909-96) ) and editions of her music

Perkin is a fascinating and currently elusive figure. Though clearly a significant musician, nothing has been written on Perkin to date, and her work is largely unknown. As a performer, she was a leading soloist and accompanist in Britain, Europe and Australia, performing regularly at the Promenade Concerts, and in venues such as the Wigmore Hall. She was involved with the Macnaghten-Lemare and Robert Mayer concerts, and later with the Australian Broadcasting Commission. As a composer, she was prolific. Her surviving output includes songs, chamber music, orchestral and brass band works, pieces for solo piano, and ballet and film music. These works were performed by leading chamber musicians such as André Navarra, Florence Hooton and Antonio Brosa. The surviving archive material is extensive, and includes much information on Perkin's long and busy broadcasting career and a large collection of recordings of her performances. A paper on Perkin was given at the 24th annual national conference of the Musicological Society of Australia in Melbourne in April 2001, with the assistance of a British Academy Overseas Conference Grant. An article on Perkin has been published in Australasian Music Research (see list of publications).

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