Before and After Corroboree: The Music of John Antill

John Antill (1904-1986) was one of the foremost composers of Australia's post-colonial period. Although a relatively prolific and much esteemed composer in Australia Antill's wider reputation is sustained chiefly by his famous ballet Corroboree - a work which was perceived to bring an authentic Australian musical style before both a national and international audience for the first time. Through Sir Eugene Goossens' championship the work was heard by enthusiastic audiences in Australia Britain Europe and the USA and was for many years the best-known work of any Australian-born and resident composer. Indeed it has remained for both Australian and overseas audiences an Australian musical icon. David Symons traces Antill's development as a composer from his early pre-Corroboree works which display a late Romantic to post-impressionist style through an analysis of the virile dissonant primitivist idiom of his magnum opus to an examination of his later output of theatrical orchestral and vocal/choral works. The book provides comprehensive and valuable insight into Antill's musical output at the same time focussing on more detailed analyses of his major works which have reached public performances and/or recordings. In this way the book not only presents a developmental picture of Antill's works but also demonstrates why they have made him one of Australia's most prominent musical creators of the post-colonial period.