John Antill was an Australian composer of the middle twentieth century. Largely unknown outside Australia, he was loosely connected with the Jindyworobak movement, which sought to promote a distinctively Australian art based on the use of Aboriginal materials and themes. It was thus a counterpart to the Indianist movement in the U.S., but came along 50 years later. Corroboree, recorded here, was Antill's most famous work. The word denotes an Aboriginal ceremony that transmits tales of the Dreaming, the creation story common ...
Read More
John Antill was an Australian composer of the middle twentieth century. Largely unknown outside Australia, he was loosely connected with the Jindyworobak movement, which sought to promote a distinctively Australian art based on the use of Aboriginal materials and themes. It was thus a counterpart to the Indianist movement in the U.S., but came along 50 years later. Corroboree, recorded here, was Antill's most famous work. The word denotes an Aboriginal ceremony that transmits tales of the Dreaming, the creation story common to many Aboriginal cultures. The precocious Antill witnessed such a ceremony at age nine and notated some of its music. Most of the links to Aboriginal music may be hard to detect for non-Australians, however, beyond the ostinatos and two-note motives that emerge over the course of the eight movements of this ballet. Antill's style is a mishmash of late Romantic nationalist devices, overlaid with touches of Percy Grainger and jazz, and finished off with Stravinskian motor rhythms...
Read Less
