Peter Sculthorpe

Aged 16, he went to Melbourne University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in piano in 1950. His Piano Sonatina (1954), based on an Aboriginal legend, was the first work of a resident Australian chosen for performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Baden-Baden, Germany. In 1958, he was awarded the Lizette Bentwich Scholarship by the University of Melbourne, which allowed him to undertake postdoctoral studies at Oxford, England where he studied composition with Edmund Rubbra and Egon Wellesz and came into contact with contemporaries such as Peter Maxwell Davies and John Cage. Sculthorpe returned to Australia in 1960 and in 1963 accepted the first appointment in composition at the University of Sydney's Music Department. Sculthorpe continues to be actively involved in the national and international music scene, attending festivals and performances and teaching at summer schools, as well as composing.