Music in Australia Research
You are advised to use SuperSearch as the comprehensive research facility to resources and the sub-category Music in Australia is recommended. More about SuperSearch, from Researching Music tutorial, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne.
For first-time users, this website is designed as a guide to the main sources of information for your study and research. Search the databases to find journal
articles, books and other publications
of interest. Within the results lists,
will sometimes link to the articles online if they are available. When 'Source it' fails, or if your article is not online, you can use the Music Journals List A-Z, or, for local print
issues, search the journal title in the University
of Melbourne Library Catalogue. If we do not hold the items you need, eligible
patrons may request them through the Interlibrary Loans service.
If you have a question about locating the information you need, contact us for expert assistance.
| Music Databases | Biographies  |
Popular Databases |
|---|---|---|
| Grove Music Online - Encyclopedia Combined fulltext access to New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians / 2nd ed., New Grove Dictionary of Opera and the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz supplemented with additional material such as websites and audio files. Guide |
Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) Browse the alphabetical lists or use Advanced Search option. |
Google
Scholar - Learn Google 201 Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives. Set Scholar Preferences to display "SourceIt@Melbourne" links to University of Melbourne holdings and subscriptions. - Choose Scholar Preferences - Find library enter - Melbourne - Check box - SourceIt @ Melbourne - Click Save Preferences Use Advanced Scholar Search for best results. |
JSTOR, 1800-  Index and fulltext to 32 Music titles plus over 1109 core research journals in many subject areas, from the first issue to the most recent years (as required by the publisher). Guide |
22 Australian Composers / by John Jenkins. First published by NMA Publications in 1988, the original chapter texts of this book are available online. |
Google Advanced Book Search - Using Google Book Search Search the full text of books to discover those that are most useful to you. From your results, you'll be able to see everything from a few short excerpts to the entire book. Alternatively, for each book, - use the Borrow this book "Find this book in a library" link. - Choose "Get this item" to display a list of Australian libraries where the book can be borrowed, or, - use the University Library catalogue for local holdings. |
| Music Index Online 1974- (EBSCO) Index to 800 international music periodicals with selective fulltext. Guide |
Composer Biographies - Australian Music Centre |
Current Contents Connect, 1998- Index |
| RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1967- (CSA) A unique index to music books, articles, essays, reviews, dissertations, Festschriften, iconographies, etc. Coverage is broad, extending well beyond the primary journals. Guide |
Australian Databases APAFT, 1995- Fulltext Based on the index APAIS, of which approximately 30 percent is available in fulltext. |
Emerald Fulltext (Emerald) A multi-disciplinary database with full text. E-journals: fulltext articles from your desktop. |
| Music Australia Australia's Music: Online, in Time |
APAIS, Index 1978- Fulltext 1995- Australian Public Affairs Information Service index to many Australian publications. |
Expanded Academic ASAP 1980- Index A multi-disciplinary database with full text access to scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers, including the New York Times. Guide |
| Important print resources Oxford companion to Australian music / ed. Warren Bebbington. Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1997. |
AUSCHRON: A Chronology of Australian Historic & Current Events (Informit) Provides a listing of significant events in Australian history with emphasis on current happenings, and covering all topics from politics to the arts. Each entry provides citations to key sources and background notes on the event. |
ingentaconnect.com (Ingenta) A multidisciplinary index and access to more than 5,000 electronic publications from over 190 publishers. E-journals: fulltext articles from your desktop |
| Currency companion to music and dance in Australia / eds. John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell. Sydney : Currency House, 2003. | Index
to the Australian Musical News 1911-1963 A print index to an important Australian music journal of the 20th century. |
Project Muse A multi-disciplinary database of the fulltext electronic journals from America's Johns Hopkins University Press covering humanities and social sciences. |
| Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, society and culture / ed. David Horton. Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1994. | Indiginous Australia (Informit) |
|
| The encyclopedia of Melbourne / ed. Andrew Brown-May & Shurlee Swain. Cambridge ; Port Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 2005. | Australian National Film
and Sound Archive A collection spanning over 100 years of Australia's film, television, radio and recorded sound heritage. Search the Collection using either Easy Search, Advanced Search or the Browse A-Z options. Search results list View/Listen Online Items where available. |
|
| Bibliography of Australian music : an index to monographs, journal articles and theses / compiled by Deborah Crisp. Armidale [N.S.W.] : Australian Music Studies Project, 1982. | Multicultural Australia and Immigration Studies - MAIS |
Composer Interviews
Off-air radio broadcasts
IMPORTANT: This material is provided for the exclusive use of students and staff of the University of Melbourne under the provisions of Part VA of the Copyright Act (1968). Authorised users may be required to provide their user name and email server password for off-campus access.
The QuickTime files require a free QuickTime 6 (or higher) player be installed on your computer. Download and Install information.
Unless otherwise labelled, files have been optimised for low bandwidth off-campus connection (modem). High Bandwith files are optimised for on-campus use but may be accessed off-campus via a broadband connection.
- Dots on the Landscape, 1 : The colonial quadrille * audio online
QuickTime 6
Since European settlement, music in Australia has had a continuously evolving role in Australian society. The music of Isaac Nathan, reputedly the colony's first professional composer, hardly constitutes an auspicious beginning to the art of composition in this country, but his arrangements of "Aboriginal melodies" and his ambitions as a composer of opera, set the scene for certain later endeavours in Australian music. Certainly, much of the 20th century was concerned with the need to write the Great Australian Opera and the search for an elusive Australian Identity in music.
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 1 July, 2001) (Catalogued)
- Dots on the Landscape, 2 : Looking over our shoulders * audio online
QuickTime 6
Europe provided Australian music with its early role models and its institutions: the concert hall, the opera house, the symphony orchestra. Young composers continue to study there and, at various time, there have been centres that have attracted our most talented musicians (e.g. Hill and Grainger at Leipzig in the 1880s and 90s; Boyd, Wesley-Smith and Edwards in York in the 1970s). And yet Australian composers have an increasingly ambivalent attitude to Europe. Working out that attitude seems still to be one of the defining features of Australian composition.
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 8 July, 2001) (Catalogued)
- Dots on the Landscape, 3 : Percy* audio online
QuickTime 6
Percy Grainger is Australia's best-known composer. His music and his life seem to embody many of the recurrent trends in Australian music: emigration, experimentation, and larrikinism. Grainger was also among the first to identify the unique potential of musical composition in Australia and to recommend that composers in this country look to the north (i.e. Asia) for inspiration and affinity.
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 15 July, 2001) (Catalogued)
- Dots on the Landscape, 4 : Looking north * audio online
QuickTime 6
In spite of Grainger's urgings, it was really not until the 1960s that Australian composers began to turn their gazes away from Europe and tap Asia as a musical resource. Some of these tappings were consciously "oriental" (Sculthorpe, Conyngham, Boyd) while others were more aesthetic (Meale). What have been the advantages of embracing influences from Indonesian gamelan to Japanese gagaku? What have been the effects on music in Australia?
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 22 July, 2001) (Catalogued)
- Dots on the Landscape, 5 : Looking around * audio online
QuickTime 6
The landscape has always been central to the visual arts in Australia. In music too, composers have drawn inspiration both from the landscape itself and the fauna it supports. Birdsong, for example, has been a feature of Australian composition since its earliest days. A composer like David Lumsdaine can even make musical works that consist entirely of edited recordings of birdsong. But there are other sorts of landscape besides the Outback and the Bush, and Barry Conyngham inspiration has been the cities in which the majority of Australians live.
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 29 July, 2001) (Catalogued)
- Dots on the Landscape, 6 : Comings and goings * audio online
QuickTime 6
The earliest Australian composers came from overseas and many continue to come. Equally, composers who were born here often find, like Grainger, that they can work more effectively in another country. How does the expatriate experience affect a composer? And how does it affect the composer's view of Australia?
(Digitally recorded from ABC Classic FM, 14:00, 5 August, 2001)(Catalogued)
- Ford, Andrew, 1957- in print
Composer to composer : conversations about contemporary music / Andrew Ford ; photographs by Malcolm Crowthers & Belinda Webster.
St Leonards, NSW, Australia : Allen & Unwin, 1993.