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Provides invaluable information regarding the rich heritage of Australian modernist piano music over the course of the 20th century.

Table of Contents

List of Musical Examples Acknowledgment Preface The First Generation Composers of Their Time: Early Modernists and Neoclassicists Composers Looking Back: Late Romantics and the Nineteenth-Century Legacy The "Australian" Composers The Second Generation Post-1945 Modernism Retrospective Composers More "Australian" Composers Sitsky's Keyboard Music The Third Generation The Next Wave of Modernism Minimalism and Maximalism Pluralism: Popular Music/Jazz/Neotonality "Australian" Composers: The Next Generation The Youngest Composers The Australian Piano Concerto Conclusion Bibliography Appendix: Database of Piano Works Considered

About the Author

Larry Sitsky is Head of the Composition Department, School of Music, Australian National University. He is also the author of Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde (Greenwood Press, 2002).

Reviews

Australian Piano Music us abundantly illustrated with well-chosen excerpts from the scores discussed, and the individual treatment of each composer makes it an effective reference text, easily consulted for commentary on a particular composer. Those wishing to gain an overview of Australian music and cultural history will do well by reading it from beginning to end. An appendix, listing publication details of the works discussed, will help pianists seeking to explore new and unfamiliar repertoire.
*Music Reference Services Quarterly*

Composer and pianist Sitsky offers a detailed overview of 20th-century Australian piano music. Using a wealth of musical examples, he explores the ways the genre has developed from the work of early modernist composers such as Margaret Sutherland through the contemporary jazz of pianist Simplicius Cheong.
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