Antill - Corroboree, Symphonic Ballet (1977) [FLAC] {Lanchberry}seeders: 4
leechers: 2
Antill - Corroboree, Symphonic Ballet (1977) [FLAC] {Lanchberry} (Size: 285.72 MB)
Description  Duration: 46 min., 2 sec. Includes programme notes. Recording level: AAD. Capture session: Recorded by ABC. Performers: Sydney Symphony Orchestra (concertmaster: Donald Hazlewood); John Lanchbery (conductor). The scoring of Corroboree calls for the following: Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, celeste and strings. PERCUSSION: xylophone, vibraphone, bass drum, thora sticks, 2 cymbals, 2 gongs, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, slap stick, ratchet, tom-tom, woodblock, sleighbells, castanets, sand blocks, Chinese temple blocks, thunder sheet and bull roarer. The music is based on a dance ceremony of the Australian Aborigines. At nine year old, John Antill witnessed the spectacle of the Corroborree, and it started a lifelong passion to learn and listen to everything about the Aborigine culture. In 1936, he began to sketch out a suite of orchestral dances based on his childhood experience. The compostition was presented informally over the years, but it wasn't until 1946, when Goosens declared "John Antill's "Corroborree" is, in my opinion, the most significant work from the pen of a contemporary Australian composer that it has been my privlege to examine". He recorded the suite for Everest records in 1958. ****** The Australian composer John Antill (1904-86) is one of those musical figures famous for a single composition--in this case, his orchestral ballet Corroboree, arguably the first substantial piece of Australian concert music to explore inspiration from aboriginal ceremonies. Born and educated in Sydney, Antill spent his early years at the St. Andrew's Cathedral School and studied composition with Alfred Hill and Arthur Benjamin. In his professional life, Antill worked as a professional clarinetist and held various administrative and musical positions with the Australian Broadcasting Company. His musical style as a composer was generally quite conservative, drawing primarily on the Anglican choir tradition in which he was raised and the late-Romantic orchestral world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is thus interesting that his most famous and significant work is a bit of an aberration within his output. In 1936, Antill began conceiving of an extended ballet inspired by aboriginal caribberies, complex storytelling ceremonies filled with singing and dancing. These ceremonies were deeply connected with the Australian landscape and with the links between past and future. The dancing and singing was intensely physical and left a memorable impression on Antill when he attended a caribberie in 1913 at Botany Bay. Antill completed Corroboree in 1942; it was premiered and championed by conductor Eugene Goosens, who called it the first piece he knew that displayed "really authentic Australian character." Like The Rite of Spring, to which comparisons have been frequently drawn (though Antill said he had never heard Stravinsky's work before writing his piece), Corroboree is usually heard in purely orchestral performances without dance. The concert version is about 40 minutes in length, with seven large movements bearing names such as "Dance to the Evening Star" or "Procession of the Totems and Closing Ceremony." The work bursts with creative orchestral colors and presents a powerfully primitive sound world in the spirit of early-20th-century modernism. It is hard to imagine an audience not enjoying the visceral energy that the music imparts. Corroboree proved tremendously influential in the years that followed, providing a distinctly Australian sound (and orchestral technique) that was further developed by many composers, including Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, and Barry Conyngham. Sharing Widget |