Pieces of Peter: Australians remember ‘a musical giant’

A Sydney child, I had the privilege to spend so much time with Peter Sculthorpe talking about music in his exquisite, white Georgian cottage in Woollahra.  He always drove a red MG MGB which was parked in the front garden of roses.  So much of what Australian music means across the world has been because of Peter’s creative work.  He was one of the first to propose that Australia should find its own voice from cultures in our geographic proximity:geographic proximity: Balinese gamelan, traditional music from Japan and especially the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A recent interaction was to commission Peter to compose a work for the opening of the Melbourne Recital Centre in 2009, ‘Song of the Yarra’.  We spent many happy hours wondering what the Yarra River running through Melbourne looked and sounded like 250 years ago.
Apart from all of that, in the often vicious and depraved world of ‘the Arts’ in Australia, Peter was always a gentle Statesman.  We all sat together in his studio, in awe, and contemplated beauty.