The Music of Margaret Sutherland

Generally regarded as one of the most important Australian composers of her era, Margaret Sutherland, in the words of Roger Covell, 'naturalised the twentieth century in Australian music'.

David Symons, senior lecturer in music at the University of WA, examines Sutherland's music and its stylistic development in the context of Australian composition.

From a wide variety of sources he has unearthed both published and unpublished compositions through which he shows Sutherland's pioneering role as the first native born composer working in Australia to write in an idiom comparable to her European contemporaries.