Top 4 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Sculthorpe

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Peter Sculthorpe

Peter Joshua Sculthorpe was an Australian composer. Much of his music resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West. He was known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music, such as Kakadu (1988) and Earth Cry (1986), which evoke the sounds and feeling of the Australian bushland and outback. He also wrote 18 string quartets, using unusual timbral effects, works for piano, and two operas. He stated that he wanted his music to make people feel better and happier for having listened to it. He typically avoided the dense, atonal techniques of many of his contemporary composers. His work was often distinguished by its distinctive use of percussion.

I love Australia passionately. I love our landscape. It's influenced most of my work, really. Almost everything I've written is about the landscape. Trying to find, the sacred, the spiritual in it.
The inspiration for my work comes from areas spanning the stark regions of Newfoundland to the lush and fertile valleys of the South. The landscapes offer me form; the people I've met in these places give them color.
I often wonder if I was destined to be a composer. I think I decided and I followed my star. — © Peter Sculthorpe
I often wonder if I was destined to be a composer. I think I decided and I followed my star.
Sadly, today there are only a few remaining speakers of kakadu or gagadju. The work, then, is concerned with my feelings about this place, its landscape, its change of seasons, its dry season and its wet, its cycle of life and death the melodic material in Kakadu, as in much of my recent music, was suggested by the contours and rhythms of Aboriginal chant.
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