ABSTRACT
Melbourne composer Henry Tate (1873-1926), a pupil of Marshall-Hall, longed for a distinctive Australian national style that would be as recognizable as the national idioms in late nineteenth-century Russia.1 He wrote in 1924: ‘If Australia is to come into line as one of the countries whose national characteristics have inspired great music, Australia must have composers who will study their own country, and aim to achieve in their music an inherent distinction that will arouse interest in it as Australian music’.2 Tate’s vision was shared by a significant number of composers active during the period between the mid-1920s and 1960. Examples of early Australian-themed orchestral works included Henry Tate’s Dawn – an Australian rhapsody for full orchestra (1922), Fritz Hart’s The Bush, Roy Agnew’s Breaking of the Drought for soprano and orchestra (1928), Lindley Evans’s An Australian Symphony (1933) and Hooper Brewster-Jones’s Australia Felix (1940).
