ABSTRACT
While Antill’s output of music with text settings – specifically the genres of choral music and solo song – is numerically extensive in the periods both before and after Corroboree, it must be observed that the number of works of any significant scope or substance in either of these two categories is even more meagre than those for the theatre or orchestra. Although his background was strongly steeped in music for church choir, the only choral works of any significant size date from the post-Corroboree period. These are the oratorio The Song of Hagar to Abraham the Patriarch (1959) and two ‘festal’ anthem-type pieces: the Festival Te Deum (1966) for choir, brass and organ written for St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney – with whose choir Antill had been associated from his childhood; and Cantate Domino (1970), for choir, brass, timpani and organ, composed for the ecumenical welcome service for Pope Paul VI at Sydney Town Hall. Antill’s remaining choral works traceable from this period are brief carols, part songs and arrangements written for diverse occasions ranging from public ceremonies to church services and school assemblies. The majority of his output for solo voice (both before and after Corroboree) is likewise of a relatively minor nature. The Antill Papers list some 40 songs, many undated, while Dean and Carell claim that Antill produced ‘literally hundreds of songs, … song arrangements and settings of psalms’, 1 many of which have evidently been lost. The only works of major significance in this genre are three song cycles written in the early 1950s, namely the Five Australian Lyrics (1953) for voice and piano and two song cycles on texts from the Psalms – Five Songs of Happiness (1953) (for voice, oboe and piano) and Five Songs of Praise (1954) for voice and piano. As might be expected, the musical character and idiom of Antill’s choral music and solo songs from the post-Corroboree period – the focus of this chapter – range from the extreme simplicity of language and form in many of his brief occasional pieces in these genres, to the more complex language of neo-classicism found also in some of these and, of course, in the above listed larger choral and vocal works.
