Robert Hughes (composer)
Encyclopedia
Robert Watson Hughes AO
MBE
(27 March 1912 – 1 August 2007) was a Scottish
-born Australia
n composer. His music was characterised as muscular, assertive, pugnacious, with a dark, troubled, even driven quality; but it was also deeply sensitive, lyrical and tender. His capacity to view a complex landscape of diverse musical activity with clarity and with wisdom has been noted. He was said to have a unique understanding of tonality. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures. He was fascinated by unorthodox divisions of tones and semitones in scales (an interest found in key 20th century composers like Scriabin
, Stravinsky
, Bartók
and Messiaen
).
Hughes wrote orchestral works (his 1951 Symphony has been described as the finest symphony composed by an Australian), music for ballet and film, some chamber works and an opera that has never been performed. While some of his works are available in published form, there are a number of well-crafted orchestral works that were recorded but never commercially published. Like other composers of his generation, including Dorian Le Gallienne
, Raymond Hanson and Margaret Sutherland
, Hughes has been considered by musicologists to write in a style reminiscent of the English pastoral school. However, Hughes listened to a wide range of music and surrounded himself with a variety of musical influences which included Bizet
, Prokofiev
and Sibelius
.
Hughes was also a champion for other Australian composers, through roles that drew on his administrative skills. Ironically, his music has of recent times only infrequently been heard either in the concert hall or on recordings: it has become eclipsed by the compositions of the younger generation whose work he espoused. However, his music was earlier championed by many notable conductors including Sir Bernard Heinze
, Joseph Post
, Sir Eugene Goossens
, Nikolai Malko
, Willem van Otterloo
, Hiroyuki Iwaki
, John Hopkins
and Myer Fredman
- and overseas by Sir John Barbirolli
, Sir Malcolm Sargent
, Norman Del Mar
, Josef Krips
, Walter Susskind
and Sir Colin Davis
.
, Inverclyde
, Scotland, on 27 March 1912. His father Joseph Hughes, a widower and retired fishmonger, emigrated to Melbourne
in 1929 with his children. There Joseph met and married another Scottish émigré, Elizabeth McMillan Duncan, who had earlier been engaged to a son of Keir Hardie
until his death in a switchboard explosion.
Robert Hughes first became passionate about music through attendance at concerts, opera performances and radio broadcasts as a child. Composition was his primary interest from the start, and while he did receive a little tuition in piano, it was purely for compositional interest. He taught himself to read music, and learned orchestration from books. By the early age of sixteen Hughes had composed many songs and piano pieces and began to receive composition and harmony lessons at the Royal College of Music
under Gilchrist.
After moving to Australia, he worked as a costing clerk in a Melbourne clothing factory to support himself, while attending as many concerts as possible. By 1938 his early compositions had been noticed by the conductor Sir Bernard Heinze
, and it was Heinze’s interest in his music that allowed Hughes to pursue composing seriously. He was offered a scholarship in 1938 to study at the Melbourne University
Conservatorium of Music. Due to family commitments, however, he was limited to receiving weekly private tuition with the teacher, composer and music critic A.E.H. Nickson, via a scholarship arranged by Bernard Heinze. He also had some lessons from Fritz Hart.
A number of Robert Hughes' orchestral works were performed at public concerts from 1939 but his enlistment in the Australian Imperial Force
(AIF) following the outbreak of World War II
put an end to his compositional activity for the next few years. He served in New Guinea
and the Solomon Islands
. The first radio broadcast of his music was of the tone-poem Legend, by the BBC
, during the war, and Hughes heard it in New Guinea, through a small signal unit's field radio set. Another tone-poem Estivall was premiered during the 1941 concerts of Australian music conducted by Bernard Heinze.
Hughes was demobilised in 1945 and returned to Melbourne. He resumed his job as costing clerk, but subsequently accepted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
's offer of a position as an assistant music librarian and writer. In 1949 his Festival Overture won the ABC prize for a ceremonial or festival overture.
In October 1950, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Federation, the Prime Minister
Robert Menzies
announced a Jubilee Symphony Competition "open to all natural-born and naturalised British subjects", with a prize of £1000. Composers had until June 1951 to compose a symphony with a maximum duration of 40 minutes. Similar competitions for literature and art were also announced with similar prize money, but unlike the symphony competition, these limited participants to Australian citizens only. There was an additional stipulation in the music competition: If the winner is not a natural-born or naturalised Australian, a special prize of £250 will be offered for the best entry submitted by an Australian citizen. First prize was awarded to an obscure English composer David Moule-Evans, and the ‘special’ Second and Third prizes in the competition were awarded to Robert Hughes and Clive Douglas respectively. Later, after hearing a recording of Hughes' symphony, one of the British judges, Sir John Barbirolli
, confessed to Hughes that it should have been awarded First Prize. A similar verdict was given by British critic Arthur Jacobs
. The original 1951 shape of the work was in three movements. The ABC recorded this version, which is very effective and powerful, for broadcast purposes. Despite his success in the competition and the early performances of the symphony, Hughes was dissatisfied with both the scherzo (second movement) and the finale. He proceeded to make two extensive revisions of the work in 1953 and 1955 respectively. He also added a slow intermezzo between the scherzo and finale in 1955, but when Norman Del Mar
conducted the work in the UK, possibly during the early 1960s, Hughes asked that the slow movement be omitted. Barbirolli invited Hughes to write a Sinfonietta for the 1957 centenary of the Hallé Orchestra
in Manchester
– the most important international commission offered to an Australian composer during the 1950s. In 1970-71, Hughes revised his symphony yet again. Using his 1955 score as a departure point, he tightened up the first sonata-form movement, lengthened the Intermezzo to become the second, slow movement, restored the trio of his original scherzo and rewrote the ending, and then rewrote much of the finale. Hughes
maintained the original idiom of the early 1950s in his work. The work has been described as "the finest symphony composed by an Australian to date. It demonstrates Hughes' mastery of the orchestra; it has strong themes, a fluent and convincing harmonic style, logical, concise form and a tremendous sense of continuity and power. To an uninitiated listener, the work sounds like a conflation of Elgar
, Walton
, Bax
, with interesting melodies derived from unorthodox scalic forms".
He also won the prize for Instrumental Composition in the National Council of Women Jubilee Competition (1952). In 1953 he was appointed Music Arranger, Editor and Orchestrator for the newly formed Victorian Symphony Orchestra
. He remained with the ABC until his retirement in 1976. In his 30 years with what became the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hughes witnessed the gradual building of a world-class ensemble under the sustained stewardship of two conductors, Willem van Otterloo
and Hiroyuki Iwaki
. During this time he composed at least eight major orchestral scores.
By 1954, Hughes had been offered two overseas scholarships, but again the need for financial security to support his family prevented him from taking up these opportunities. He remained in Australia and received a number of commissions, including Linn O'Dee: A Highland Fancy, commissioned by the Victorian State Government for the state reception for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh
during the 1954 Royal Visit. He won first prize in the 1954 APRA
/ABC Competition.
Robert Hughes was elected to the Board of the Australasian Performing Right Association
(APRA) as a Writer/Director in 1958. In 1959, he steered APRA towards establishing the Fellowship of Australian Composers, of which he was a Foundation Member and vice-president for a decade. He was appointed President of the APRA Music Foundation in 1966, and retained this position until the Foundation was reconstituted in 1977 to become the APRA Music Committee. Hughes became the first composer to be appointed chairman of the APRA board, a position he held for 25 years.
Hughes was active throughout his life as a supporter and promoter of Australian music. In 1966, as part of a delegation together with John Antill
and Harold Evans, he persuaded Menzies (by now Sir Robert Menzies) to form the Commonwealth Assistance to Australian Composers.
He embarked on a world tour under the auspices of APRA in 1967 to promote Australian composition. With the election of the Whitlam
government in 1972, Hughes became a member of the first Music Board of the Australian Council for the Arts. In 1974, the Music Board launched the Australian Music Centre
(AMC), and Hughes became a board member.
He was the recipient of several awards for his service to music including an MBE
for services to music in 1978, the Distinguished Services to Australian Music award at the 2003 Classical Music Awards, and an Officer of the Order of Australia
in 2005.
In 1989 his orchestral composition Fantasia was nominated in the Most Performed Australasian Serious Work category of the 1989 APRA Music Awards.
In 1997, the AMC honoured him with its award for long-term contribution to Australian music.
Robert Hughes was composing music well into his tenth decade. He died on 1 August 2007, aged 95, and was survived by three daughters and five grandchildren.
His brother Jim Hughes was also involved in broadcasting. He was a comedian and announcer with radio station 3DB and was a popular personality and performer under the stage name Jock McLaughlan.
Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
MBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(27 March 1912 – 1 August 2007) was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
-born Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n composer. His music was characterised as muscular, assertive, pugnacious, with a dark, troubled, even driven quality; but it was also deeply sensitive, lyrical and tender. His capacity to view a complex landscape of diverse musical activity with clarity and with wisdom has been noted. He was said to have a unique understanding of tonality. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures. He was fascinated by unorthodox divisions of tones and semitones in scales (an interest found in key 20th century composers like Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
).
Hughes wrote orchestral works (his 1951 Symphony has been described as the finest symphony composed by an Australian), music for ballet and film, some chamber works and an opera that has never been performed. While some of his works are available in published form, there are a number of well-crafted orchestral works that were recorded but never commercially published. Like other composers of his generation, including Dorian Le Gallienne
Dorian Le Gallienne
Dorian Leon Marlois Le Gallienne was an Australian composer, teacher and music critic.-Biography:Dorian Le Gallienne was born in Melbourne in 1915. His father, an actor, was born in France, and his mother, a pianist who had studied with G. W. L. Marshall-Hall, was the daughter of the Assistant...
, Raymond Hanson and Margaret Sutherland
Margaret Sutherland
Margaret Sutherland was an Australian composer, probably the best-known female composer her country has produced....
, Hughes has been considered by musicologists to write in a style reminiscent of the English pastoral school. However, Hughes listened to a wide range of music and surrounded himself with a variety of musical influences which included Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
, Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
and Sibelius
Jean
Jean may refer to:* Jeans, pants, trousers or high waist overalls made from denimPeople* Jean , pronounced , is the French form of John* Jean , pronounced and sometimes , is the Scottish form of Jane...
.
Hughes was also a champion for other Australian composers, through roles that drew on his administrative skills. Ironically, his music has of recent times only infrequently been heard either in the concert hall or on recordings: it has become eclipsed by the compositions of the younger generation whose work he espoused. However, his music was earlier championed by many notable conductors including Sir Bernard Heinze
Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC was an Australian Professor of Music, conductor, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music....
, Joseph Post
Joseph Post
Joseph Mozart Post OBE was an Australian conductor and music administrator. He made an unrivalled contribution to the development of opera-conducting in Australia and was, in Roger Covell's words, the 'first Australian-born musician to excel in this genre'...
, Sir Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
, Nikolai Malko
Nikolai Malko
-Biography:Malko was born in Semaky, Ukraine. His father was Ukrainian, his mother Russian. He studied philology at St Petersburg University. He published articles on music criticism in the Russian press and performed as a pianist and later a conductor. In 1906 he completed his studies in history...
, Willem van Otterloo
Willem van Otterloo
Jan Willem van Otterloo was a Dutch conductor, cellist and composer.-Biography:Van Otterloo was born in Winterswijk, Gelderland, in the Netherlands, the son of William Frederik van Otterloo, a railway inspector, and his wife Anna Catharina Enderlé...
, Hiroyuki Iwaki
Hiroyuki Iwaki
was a Japanese conductor and percussionist.-Biography:Iwaki was born in Tokyo in 1932. Shortly after he entered an elementary school, he moved to Kyoto due to his father's transference. He came to play the xylophone at nine years old...
, John Hopkins
John Hopkins
- People :* John Hopkins , British film and television writer* John Hopkins , American film and television writer* John Hopkins , British actor* John Hopkins , British academic...
and Myer Fredman
Myer Fredman
Myer Fredman is a British-Australian conductor.He studied at Dartington Hall and in London with Peter Gellhorn, Vilém Tauský, Sir Adrian Boult, and was assistant conductor to Otto Klemperer, Vittorio Gui, Sir John Pritchard and Sir Charles Mackerras.He was conductor at the Glyndebourne Festival...
- and overseas by Sir John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar CBE was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialized in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He left a great legacy of recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams,...
, Josef Krips
Josef Krips
Josef Alois Krips was an Austrian conductor and violinist.-Biography:Krips was born in Vienna and went on to become a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski and Felix Weingartner. From 1921 to 1924, he served as Weingartner's assistant at the Vienna Volksoper and as répétiteur and chorus master...
, Walter Susskind
Walter Susskind
Jan Walter Susskind was a Czech-born British conductor.-Biography:Susskind was born in Prague, Austria–Hungary, now the Czech Republic. His father was a Viennese music critic and his Czech mother was a piano teacher. At the State Conservatorium he studied under composer Josef Suk, the son-in-law...
and Sir Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
.
Biography
Robert Watson Hughes was born in LevanLevan
Levan can refer to:* Levan, a homopolysaccharide which is composed of D-fructofuranosyl* A group of fructans produced by bacteria or created by breaking down other kinds of plant fructans, called levan beta 2→6* The town of Levan, Utah...
, Inverclyde
Inverclyde
Inverclyde is one of 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Together with the Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire council areas, Inverclyde forms part of the historic county of Renfrewshire - which current exists as a registration county and lieutenancy area - located in the west...
, Scotland, on 27 March 1912. His father Joseph Hughes, a widower and retired fishmonger, emigrated to Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
in 1929 with his children. There Joseph met and married another Scottish émigré, Elizabeth McMillan Duncan, who had earlier been engaged to a son of Keir Hardie
Keir Hardie
James Keir Hardie, Sr. , was a Scottish socialist and labour leader, and was the first Independent Labour Member of Parliament elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
until his death in a switchboard explosion.
Robert Hughes first became passionate about music through attendance at concerts, opera performances and radio broadcasts as a child. Composition was his primary interest from the start, and while he did receive a little tuition in piano, it was purely for compositional interest. He taught himself to read music, and learned orchestration from books. By the early age of sixteen Hughes had composed many songs and piano pieces and began to receive composition and harmony lessons at the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
under Gilchrist.
After moving to Australia, he worked as a costing clerk in a Melbourne clothing factory to support himself, while attending as many concerts as possible. By 1938 his early compositions had been noticed by the conductor Sir Bernard Heinze
Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC was an Australian Professor of Music, conductor, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music....
, and it was Heinze’s interest in his music that allowed Hughes to pursue composing seriously. He was offered a scholarship in 1938 to study at the Melbourne University
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
Conservatorium of Music. Due to family commitments, however, he was limited to receiving weekly private tuition with the teacher, composer and music critic A.E.H. Nickson, via a scholarship arranged by Bernard Heinze. He also had some lessons from Fritz Hart.
A number of Robert Hughes' orchestral works were performed at public concerts from 1939 but his enlistment in the Australian Imperial Force
Australian Imperial Force
The Australian Imperial Force was the name given to all-volunteer Australian Army forces dispatched to fight overseas during World War I and World War II.* First Australian Imperial Force * Second Australian Imperial Force...
(AIF) following the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
put an end to his compositional activity for the next few years. He served in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
and the Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
. The first radio broadcast of his music was of the tone-poem Legend, by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, during the war, and Hughes heard it in New Guinea, through a small signal unit's field radio set. Another tone-poem Estivall was premiered during the 1941 concerts of Australian music conducted by Bernard Heinze.
Hughes was demobilised in 1945 and returned to Melbourne. He resumed his job as costing clerk, but subsequently accepted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's offer of a position as an assistant music librarian and writer. In 1949 his Festival Overture won the ABC prize for a ceremonial or festival overture.
In October 1950, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Federation, the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
announced a Jubilee Symphony Competition "open to all natural-born and naturalised British subjects", with a prize of £1000. Composers had until June 1951 to compose a symphony with a maximum duration of 40 minutes. Similar competitions for literature and art were also announced with similar prize money, but unlike the symphony competition, these limited participants to Australian citizens only. There was an additional stipulation in the music competition: If the winner is not a natural-born or naturalised Australian, a special prize of £250 will be offered for the best entry submitted by an Australian citizen. First prize was awarded to an obscure English composer David Moule-Evans, and the ‘special’ Second and Third prizes in the competition were awarded to Robert Hughes and Clive Douglas respectively. Later, after hearing a recording of Hughes' symphony, one of the British judges, Sir John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, confessed to Hughes that it should have been awarded First Prize. A similar verdict was given by British critic Arthur Jacobs
Arthur Jacobs
Arthur David Jacobs was an English music critic, musicologist, teacher, librettist and translator. Among his many books, two of the best known are his Penguin Dictionary of Music, which was reprinted in several editions between 1958 and 1996, and his biography of Arthur Sullivan, which was praised...
. The original 1951 shape of the work was in three movements. The ABC recorded this version, which is very effective and powerful, for broadcast purposes. Despite his success in the competition and the early performances of the symphony, Hughes was dissatisfied with both the scherzo (second movement) and the finale. He proceeded to make two extensive revisions of the work in 1953 and 1955 respectively. He also added a slow intermezzo between the scherzo and finale in 1955, but when Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar CBE was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialized in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He left a great legacy of recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams,...
conducted the work in the UK, possibly during the early 1960s, Hughes asked that the slow movement be omitted. Barbirolli invited Hughes to write a Sinfonietta for the 1957 centenary of the Hallé Orchestra
The Hallé
The Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
– the most important international commission offered to an Australian composer during the 1950s. In 1970-71, Hughes revised his symphony yet again. Using his 1955 score as a departure point, he tightened up the first sonata-form movement, lengthened the Intermezzo to become the second, slow movement, restored the trio of his original scherzo and rewrote the ending, and then rewrote much of the finale. Hughes
maintained the original idiom of the early 1950s in his work. The work has been described as "the finest symphony composed by an Australian to date. It demonstrates Hughes' mastery of the orchestra; it has strong themes, a fluent and convincing harmonic style, logical, concise form and a tremendous sense of continuity and power. To an uninitiated listener, the work sounds like a conflation of Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
, Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
, Bax
Arnold Bax
Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, KCVO was an English composer and poet. His musical style blended elements of romanticism and impressionism, often with influences from Irish literature and landscape. His orchestral scores are noted for their complexity and colourful instrumentation...
, with interesting melodies derived from unorthodox scalic forms".
He also won the prize for Instrumental Composition in the National Council of Women Jubilee Competition (1952). In 1953 he was appointed Music Arranger, Editor and Orchestrator for the newly formed Victorian Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...
. He remained with the ABC until his retirement in 1976. In his 30 years with what became the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hughes witnessed the gradual building of a world-class ensemble under the sustained stewardship of two conductors, Willem van Otterloo
Willem van Otterloo
Jan Willem van Otterloo was a Dutch conductor, cellist and composer.-Biography:Van Otterloo was born in Winterswijk, Gelderland, in the Netherlands, the son of William Frederik van Otterloo, a railway inspector, and his wife Anna Catharina Enderlé...
and Hiroyuki Iwaki
Hiroyuki Iwaki
was a Japanese conductor and percussionist.-Biography:Iwaki was born in Tokyo in 1932. Shortly after he entered an elementary school, he moved to Kyoto due to his father's transference. He came to play the xylophone at nine years old...
. During this time he composed at least eight major orchestral scores.
By 1954, Hughes had been offered two overseas scholarships, but again the need for financial security to support his family prevented him from taking up these opportunities. He remained in Australia and received a number of commissions, including Linn O'Dee: A Highland Fancy, commissioned by the Victorian State Government for the state reception for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
during the 1954 Royal Visit. He won first prize in the 1954 APRA
Australasian Performing Right Association
The Australasian Performing Right Association is a copyright collective representing New Zealand and Australian composers, lyricists and music publishers. The association's head offices located in Sydney Australia, and it has branch offices in Auckland, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth...
/ABC Competition.
Robert Hughes was elected to the Board of the Australasian Performing Right Association
Australasian Performing Right Association
The Australasian Performing Right Association is a copyright collective representing New Zealand and Australian composers, lyricists and music publishers. The association's head offices located in Sydney Australia, and it has branch offices in Auckland, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth...
(APRA) as a Writer/Director in 1958. In 1959, he steered APRA towards establishing the Fellowship of Australian Composers, of which he was a Foundation Member and vice-president for a decade. He was appointed President of the APRA Music Foundation in 1966, and retained this position until the Foundation was reconstituted in 1977 to become the APRA Music Committee. Hughes became the first composer to be appointed chairman of the APRA board, a position he held for 25 years.
Hughes was active throughout his life as a supporter and promoter of Australian music. In 1966, as part of a delegation together with John Antill
John Antill
John Henry Antill, CMG, OBE was an Australian composer best known for his ballet Corroboree.-Biography:Antill was born in Sydney in 1904, and was educated and trained in music at Trinity Grammar School, Sydney and St Andrew's Cathedral School. Upon leaving school in 1920 he became apprenticed to...
and Harold Evans, he persuaded Menzies (by now Sir Robert Menzies) to form the Commonwealth Assistance to Australian Composers.
- "We wanted to show him what a composer had to go through, the costs involved with buying paper and ink, and particularly copying scores and parts," Hughes once recalled. "After a two-hour chat, with tea and biscuits, he understood".
He embarked on a world tour under the auspices of APRA in 1967 to promote Australian composition. With the election of the Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
government in 1972, Hughes became a member of the first Music Board of the Australian Council for the Arts. In 1974, the Music Board launched the Australian Music Centre
Australian Music Centre
The Australian Music Centre fosters the development of an Australian music community by providing specialist support to its membership of performers, composers, sound artists, educators, students, and music specialists across Australia and throughout the world.The AMC is the Australian national...
(AMC), and Hughes became a board member.
He was the recipient of several awards for his service to music including an MBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for services to music in 1978, the Distinguished Services to Australian Music award at the 2003 Classical Music Awards, and an Officer of the Order of Australia
Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
in 2005.
In 1989 his orchestral composition Fantasia was nominated in the Most Performed Australasian Serious Work category of the 1989 APRA Music Awards.
In 1997, the AMC honoured him with its award for long-term contribution to Australian music.
Robert Hughes was composing music well into his tenth decade. He died on 1 August 2007, aged 95, and was survived by three daughters and five grandchildren.
His brother Jim Hughes was also involved in broadcasting. He was a comedian and announcer with radio station 3DB and was a popular personality and performer under the stage name Jock McLaughlan.
List of works (incomplete)
- Legend, tone-poem (broadcast during WW2)
- Estivall, tone-poem (premiered 1941)
- Festival Overture (1949)
- Symphony No. 1 (1951, rev. 1953, 1955, 1971)
- Essay No. 1 (1953; orchestra)
- Linn O’Dee: A Highland Fancy (1954; orchestra)
- Xanadu, ballet suite (1954; inspired by the Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
poem Kubla KhanKubla KhanKubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816...
; dedicated to Joseph PostJoseph PostJoseph Mozart Post OBE was an Australian conductor and music administrator. He made an unrivalled contribution to the development of opera-conducting in Australia and was, in Roger Covell's words, the 'first Australian-born musician to excel in this genre'...
, who conducted the premiere with the Melbourne Symphony OrchestraMelbourne Symphony OrchestraThe Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...
in 1955) - Sinfonietta, commissioned by the Hallé OrchestraThe HalléThe Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
in Britain for its centenary season in 1957 - Orchestration of Margaret SutherlandMargaret SutherlandMargaret Sutherland was an Australian composer, probably the best-known female composer her country has produced....
’s Three Temperaments (1964) - Farrago Suite (movements: March, Waltz, Pastorale, Burlesque; 1965; orchestra)
- Fantasia (1968; orchestra)
- Synthesis (1969; orchestra)
- Chang-An: music for a Chinese play (1960s)
- Sea Spell (orchestra; commissioned for an international conference of dentists in 1973; the first orchestral music played in the Sydney Opera HouseSydney Opera HouseThe Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...
) - Five Indian poems (1973; mixed choir and small orchestra; words by Sarojini NaiduSarojini NaiduSarojini Naidu , also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet...
) - Essay No. 2 (1982; orchestra)
- Song for exiles (1991; S.A.T.B. chorus and solo oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
doubling English hornCor anglaisThe cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
and organ and piano; words by Neil MunroNeil Munro-Acting career:Born in Musselburgh, Scotland, Munro moved to Toronto at an early age. After graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1967, he quickly established himself as one of the most compelling theatre actors in Canada, performing with Toronto Arts Productions, the National...
) - Prelude (organ; 2004)
- The Forbidden Rite dance drama (orchestra; the first full-length Australian ballet written and produced for television)
- Variations on an Irish air for harp and small string orchestra
- Incidental music for a production of Tennessee WilliamsTennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
's The Glass MenagerieThe Glass MenagerieThe Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
, scored for two flutes - An opera (never performed)
- Come to the fair
- Four interludes – oriental
- Goin’ home
- The intriguers: the story of the clever minstrel and the three scheming suitors, a comedy with music in three acts (lyrics and dialogue by Suzanne Duncalf)
- Mood music
- Invictus (with Bruno Huhn)
- Jinker ride (with Dorian Le GallienneDorian Le GallienneDorian Leon Marlois Le Gallienne was an Australian composer, teacher and music critic.-Biography:Dorian Le Gallienne was born in Melbourne in 1915. His father, an actor, was born in France, and his mother, a pianist who had studied with G. W. L. Marshall-Hall, was the daughter of the Assistant...
) - My journey’s end
- Film and television scores:
- Mike and Stefani (1952)
- The Life and Death of King Richard II (1960; TV)
- Macbeth (1965; TV)
- The Golden Positions (1971: TV)
External links
- Australian Music Centre: obituary
- National Library of Australia catalogue
- Genealogy: OUR AUSTRALIAN DUNCANS
- The Australian; Obituary 'Selflessly composed in a life of music', Vincent Plush
- Musicological Society of Australia: Newsletter, September 2007
- Resonate magazine: Vale Robert Hughes 1912-2007
- IMDB
- It's an Honour: MBE
- It's an Honour: AO
- Dr Rhoderick McNeill, The Australian Symphony of the 1950s: A Paper presented to the Faculty of Arts Research Forum, 10 March 2004