David Lumsdaine

Composer David Lumsdaine mixed contemporary techniques with a deep appreciation of Australian landscapes, physical and mental. He wrote music in many genres, including works featuring electronics. Lumsdaine was born on October 31, 1931, in Sydney. His family of professionals, clergy, and farmers, not particularly musical, had been in Australia since the early 19th century. He attended the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music (now the Sydney Conservatorium of Music), studying with composer John Anderson, but he was dissatisfied with musical opportunities in Australia and, on the advice of another professor, moved to Britain in 1953. He spent most of the rest of his life there but retained close ties to Australia, and much of his music had Australian content of one kind or another. Lumsdaine studied with Matyas Seiber and Lennox Berkeley. Another important influence was poet Peter Porter, who provided the text for the first work Lumsdaine acknowledged, the cantata Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). During this period, Lumsdaine was active in the nuclear disarmament movement. During the first part of his career, Lumsdaine's music involved serial-related techniques. His work, more generally, also made use of the Baroque concept of the ground, which might be inflected in modern directions or treated straightforwardly. Later, Lumsdaine wrote music using a great variety of techniques; in the words of Michael Hooper, writing on Lumsdaine's website, "This music presents a vast palette of sounds and ideas, some of which return again and again: dance, melody, melodies combining into harmony (chorales), birdsong, continuity, discontinuity, myth, and resonance." Such orchestral works as Salvation Creek with Eagle (1974) and Hagoromo (1977) represented Australian natural scenes. Other works quoted earlier pieces of music. He was quite prolific, writing music in most major genres; some of his works used recorded sound from Australian landscapes and other electronic material. Lumsdaine was married three times; his third wife, for a substantial period of the last part of his life, was composer Nicola Le Fanu. In 1996, Lumsdaine mostly retired from composition. He died in York, England, on January 12, 2024.
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