13.5.1 Alfred Hill
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This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.
13.5.1 Alfred Hill
Few composers can be credited with helping to lay the foundations for the
musical life of 2 countries while living half a world away from the major
music centres of the globe. Born 16 November 1870 in Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia, Alfred Hill grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, where his family
moved when he was 18 months old. He began his musical career as a violinist
in the orchestra of travelling theatre groups. In 1887 Hill began 4 years of
study at the Leipzig Konservatorium in Germany, and he also became a
violinist in the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Immersed in German musical
life as he was during these years, the influence of German Romanticism
remained strong throughout his life.
Hill returned to New Zealand in 1892, and became conductor of the Wellington
Orchestral Society, as well as teacher, violinist and composer. A number of
his works were based on Maori materials, and he would later also draw from
Australian Aboriginal and New Guinea sources. In 1896, Hill went to
Australia and settled in Sydney, New South Wales. In 1902 he returned to New
Zealand as an opera conductor, and in 1906 he served as music director of the
International Exhibition Orchestra in Christchurch, the first fully
professional orchestra in that country. In 1908 Hill returned permanently to
Australia. In Sydney he helped to establish the New South Wales
Conservatorium in 1913, and he served as professor of harmony and composition
from 1916 to 1934. No less active in retirement, he remained a great
influence on the music of Australia and New Zealand.
Hill was a prolific composer and produced more than 500 works. Most of his
early works were dramatic and included operas based on conventional European
topics, Maori legends and Australian literature. Chamber music dominated
most of his output in the 1930s, including most of his 17 string quartets.
After 1940 he composed 12 of his 13 symphonies, all but the first of which
were essentially arrangements of chamber works. He also composed short tone
poems and several concerti, for trumpet, violin, viola, piano and horn. He
remained loyal to the conservative traditions he had accepted in Leipzig, and
the Maori and Aboriginal materials of New Zealand and Australia served only
as exotic embellishments of the essentially Romantic idiom of his music.
Listeners who enjoy melodic and colourful music of the Late Romantic period
would find Hill very rewarding. Alfred Hill died in Sydney on 30 October,
1960, less than 3 weeks before his 90th birthday.
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