Australia’s Jindyworobak Composers

David Symons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367569594
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000206463
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Australia's Jindyworobak Composers examines the music of a historically and artistically significant group of Australian composers active during the later post-colonial period (1930s–c. 1960). These composers sought to establish a uniquely Australian identity through the evocation of the country's landscape and environment, including notably the use of Aboriginal elements or imagery in their music, texts, dramatic scenarios or 'programmes'. Nevertheless, it must be observed that this word was originally adopted as a manifesto for an Australian literary movement, and was, for the most part, only retrospectively applied by commentators (rather than the composers themselves) to art music that was seen to share similar aesthetic aims.

Chapter One demonstrates to what extent a meaningful relationship may or may not be discernible between the artistic tenets of Jindyworobak writers and apparently likeminded composers. In doing so, it establishes the context for a full exploration of the music of Australian composers to whom 'Jindyworobak' has come to be popularly applied. The following chapters explore the music of composers writing within the Jindyworobak period itself and, finally, the later twentieth-century afterlife of Jindyworobakism. This will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers of Ethnomusicology, Australian Music and Music History.

1 The Jindyworobak composer: fact or fiction?¹

To the reader unfamiliar with the history of Australian art music, the title of this book may appear substantially unintelligible. However, such a reader will soon find that the tantalisingly exotic-sounding Australian Aboriginal word ‘jindyworobak’ has come to have significant currency in the context of musical criticism in Australia over the last half-century or so. The adjective ‘jindyworobak’ and its rather clumsy noun extension ‘Jindyworobakism’ is now applied quite commonly to a body of music written especially from the late 1930s till around 1960. It refers to the music of Australian composers who sought to establish a uniquely Australian identity through the evocation of the country's landscape and environment, including notably the use of Aboriginal elements or imagery in their music, texts, dramatic scenarios or ‘programmes’. Nevertheless, it must be observed that this word was originally adopted as a manifesto for an Australian literary movement, and was, for the most part, only retrospectively applied by commentators (rather than the composers themselves) to art music that was seen to share similar aesthetic aims. In order, then, to establish the credentials of a ‘Jindyworobak composer’, it must be ascertained to what extent a meaningful relationship may or may not be discernible between the artistic tenets of the Jindyworobak writers and apparently likeminded composers. The remainder of this introductory chapter will attempt such a preliminary investigation, in order to establish a context for the exploration in subsequent chapters of the music of Australian composers to whom the label ‘Jindyworobak’ has come to be popularly applied.

The Jindyworobak literary movement may be defined as one of a number of manifestations of nationalism prominent in the Australian arts of the early to mid-twentieth century. It was founded by the South Australian poet Rex Ingamells (1913–1955) and included a group of writers such as Ian Mudie (1911–1976), Flexmore Hudson (1913–1988), William Hart-Smith (1911–1990) and Roland Robinson (1912–1992). Ingamells adopted the Aboriginal word ‘jindyworobak’ that he found in James Devaney's (1890–1976) book The Vanished Tribes² together with its meaning ‘to annex or join’. The artistic credo of the Jindyworobaks was presented in a pamphlet titled Conditional Culture first published in Adelaide in 1938.³ In this pamphlet Ingamells, after announcing his adoption of the term ‘jindyworobak’ with its meaning as given above, states:

The Jindyworobaks, I say, are those individuals who are endeavouring to free Australian art from whatever alien influences trammel it, that is, to bring it into proper contact with its material.⁴

He then goes on to list the three fundamental ‘conditions’ of Jindyworobak art:

1 A clear recognition of environmental values;

2 The debunking of much nonsense; [and]

3 An understanding of Australia's history and traditions, primeval, colonial and modern.⁵

These three ‘conditions’, stated thus, appear somewhat vague and unfocussed; and it is not until one reads Ingamells's detailed exposition of each ‘condition’ that a clear profile of Jindyworobakism emerges.

The first condition – ‘a clear recognition of environmental values’ – was the one that Ingamells regarded as the most important of the three. It refers specifically to the white Australian's identification with the Australian landscape – especially via the natural affinity with it found in Aboriginal spirituality and myth. From today's standpoint this may be seen as a kind of cultural appropriation since the Jindyworobak preoccupation with things Aboriginal was not primarily for the sake of Aboriginal culture itself, nor yet was it concerned with that culture's relationship with a white displacing culture. It was rather seen as a means for the white Australian to achieve a similarly deep spiritual link with the unique Australian environment. However, in the Jindyworobak period (1940s and 1950s), the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ would not have occurred to non-Indigenous artists – and certainly not as an ethical issue.

Ingamells's second condition, ‘the debunking of much nonsense’, refers to the particular use of a language and imagery appropriate to express the ‘environmental values’ of the first condition. The choice of the word ‘nonsense’ here reflects Ingamells's attitude to the use by earlier Australian poets of what he saw as outworn Victorian ‘poeticisms’ which he considered inappropriate to the expression of an Australian poetic idiom. Indeed, his concluding definition of ‘environmental values’ makes this clear, namely ‘the distinct qualities of an environment which cannot be satisfactorily expressed in the conventional terms that suit other environments’.⁶ It is clear from reading much of Ingamells's verse that, apart from the use of ‘Australian’ words such as ‘scrub’, ‘bush’ and ‘creek’ instead of the English words ‘wood’ or ‘brook’ etc., he saw a central role for the use of Aboriginal words both for their imagery and for their sheer sound value in establishing a strongly Australian idiom. This aspect of Jindyworobak poetry, of course, invites an immediate comparison with the incorporation of Aboriginal melodic and rhythmic material into their music by twentieth-century Australian composers. Since such composers have been frequently criticised for their lack of ‘authenticity’ in the use of such materials in the context of a thoroughly European musical language, it may be worth quoting at this point from Brian Elliott's introduction to an anthology of Jindyworobak poetry and prose, as it bears upon this very issue in relation to the Jindyworobaks' artistic aims:

[T]he Jindyworobaks never set out to write Aboriginal poetry in English words … [T]hey always retained their white character, shown in the most unmistakeable way in their continuation in the European tradition of lyrical styles … [T]hey were lyrical poets … in the classical European and even (deny it as they might) the English tradition; and they were never anything else.⁷

Ingamells's third condition, relating to the ‘understanding of Australia's history and traditions’ emphasises the role of the Aboriginal heritage by virtue of its ‘primeval’ status. According to Elliott, the Jindyworobak vision entails appropriating the Aboriginal concept of the ‘Dreamtime’ to include the total history – black and white – of the country.⁸ Ingamells comments thus:

Our traditions are twofold. Inextricably woven with the transplanted European culture are our experiences of the Australian environment … [T]o ensure imaginative truth our writers and painters must become hard-working students of Aboriginal culture … From Aboriginal art and song we must learn much of our new technique; from Aboriginal legend, sublimated through our thought [emphasis added], we must achieve something of a pristine outlook on life.⁹

Finally, then, it should be stressed that it is the primary focus on ‘environmental values’ – whether ‘primeval, colonial [or] modern’ – that distinguishes Ingamells's Jindyworobak philosophy from the more centrally human, social and cultural orientation found in other expressions of Australian nationalism in the arts.

The remainder of this chapter will consider the relationship between Jindyworobak literature and the music of composers to be addressed in greater detail in subsequent chapters. Much of this music was written during the years in which the Jindyworobak literary movement emerged, flourished and decayed. The main relevant composers from this period are, in order of seniority, Alfred Hill (1869–1960), Mirrie Hill (1889–1986), Clive Douglas (1903–1977), John Antill (1904–1986) and James Penberthy (1917–1999). However, no survey of Australia's composers with Jindyworobak credentials would be complete without the inclusion of Peter Sculthorpe (1929–2014) who may be claimed to be a kind of ‘neo-Jindyworobak’. Sculthorpe's career began during the last years of the Jindyworobak movement in the 1950s, but flourished throughout the remainder of the twentieth century and beyond. Sculthorpe was also to become a major ‘catalyst’ in a remarkable resurgence of national, regional and environmental preoccupations in the work of a significant group of composers from about the 1970s onwards. The work of Sculthorpe and other composers of the contemporary (post-1960s) period will be addressed in Chapter 6 of this book, and their relationship to the aims and ideals of the mid-century Jindyworobaks critically assessed.

In order to assess the degree to which a genuine relationship may be considered to exist between Jindyworobak literature and music, four broad criteria are proposed. These are: first, a perceived connection between Jindyworobak literature and music on the part of the relevant writers and composers; second, the use, by these composers, of texts or other extramusical subject matter of a Jindyworobak character; third, their incorporation of recognisably Aboriginal melodic, rhythmic and other musical elements; and fourth, the use of such musical and extramusical materials and associations for the primary purpose of creating an Australian identity in their music.

On the basis of the first of these criteria – a conscious link between Jindyworobak writers and composers – it would seem that the notion of a Jindyworobak composer is almost disqualified at the very outset. Although further detailed research may yet uncover comments or references by composers of the time to the literary movement (and vice versa), so far such references appear to be conspicuous by their near absence. To consider first the question as to whether the Jindyworobak writers recognised any association with the work of contemporary composers, the answer seems distinctly unpromising. The vast bulk of the critical literature produced during the heyday of the Jindyworobaks is, not surprisingly, concerned solely with the literature itself – predominantly, but not exclusively, poetry. Apart from the central corpus of verse, published in annual collections titled Jindyworobak Anthology from 1938 to 1953, there were a number of books, pamphlets and reviews largely concerned with critical debate surrounding Jindyworobak theory as set out in Ingamells's Conditional Culture. Of these, two significant publications deserve mention, both of them published under the Jindyworobak imprimatur. The earlier of these was Cultural Cross-Section, a collection of twenty-one essays by various authors, published in 1941 and edited by John Ingamells, the brother of Rex Ingamells.¹⁰ These essays include one on painting (by Margaret Preston), one on sculpture (by Mary Harris) and two on music (by A.N. Ingamells¹¹ and Hooper Brewster-Jones). A.N. Ingamells's short essay, ‘The Next Step in Music’,¹² however, is little more than a ‘sermon’ on what the author considers to be the ideal composer – no mention being made of ‘Australianism’ or of Jindyworobak theory although written, no doubt, from the standpoint of such ideals. Typical of the essay's tone is the following:

Man must vibrate to the inspirational forces emanating from the peaks of consciousness. Thus he will be able to sense, select and combine sounds, colours, forms and movements in a far finer way than any purely technical and intellectual knowledge, however great, would enable him to do.¹³

It is this statement that was also quoted by A.D. Hope in his review of Cultural Cross-Section in the journal Southerly. Commenting that ‘the Jindyworobaks have not yet been able to nationalise music’, Hope goes on to say that ‘(i)t does appear, however, that the Jindyworobak composer is going to get there in the end …’¹⁴ Hope's reading of Ingamells in relation to Jindyworobak ideals is noteworthy as he is probably the first writer to admit the concept of a ‘Jindyworobak composer’ – even if it is not clear as to whether he deems such a composer yet to exist. Perhaps even more curious, however, is Brewster-Jones's essay ‘Australian Musical Composition – What of It?’¹⁵ Brewster-Jones (1887–1949) was a notable composer, conductor and music critic during these years and lived in Adelaide, the birthplace of the Jindyworobak movement. His essay, however, while comprising a discussion of Australian musical composition at the time, is nevertheless cast in very general terms, with no consideration of a ‘national’ (let alone Jindyworobak) style, either actual or potential, in Australian music. In quoting the views of Joseph Post on the then current state of musical composition, Brewster-Jones mentions works by such composers as Clive Douglas, Margaret Sutherland (1897–1984), Frank Hutchens (1892–1965) and Lindley Evans (1895–1982); but even here there is no mention of Douglas's ‘national’ works – the short opera A Bush Legend of 1938 and the orchestral ‘Australian Bush Scenes’ extracted from it – such as Carwoola (1939) or Corroboree (1940) – each of which had received its first performance prior to the publication of Cultural Cross-Section.¹⁶ Finally, Brewster-Jones made no mention of his own works written up to this time, at least two of which (to be mentioned later) could be seen as relevant to the subject of ‘Australianism’.

In the second Jindyworobak publication warranting mention, namely The Jindyworobak Review 1938–48,¹⁷ the only significant reference to music occurs in an essay by Flexmore Hudson titled ‘A Prophet in His Own Country’.¹⁸ Here Hudson refers critically to Rex Ingamells's demand in Conditional Culture (see above) fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of music examples
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: a unique expression of artistic nationalism?
• 1 The Jindyworobak composer: fact or fiction?
• 2 Alfred and Mirrie Hill
• 3 Clive Douglas
• 4 John Antill
• 5 James Penberthy
• 6 Peter Sculthorpe and the afterlife of Jindyworobakism
• 7 Jindyworobakism in global perspective
• Bibliography
• Index