Anne Boyd
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Anne Boyd (born April 18 1946) is an Australian composer and music educator.
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[edit] Childhood
When she was very young, her father died, and her mother sent her to live with relatives thousands of kilometers away in Longreach, in central Queensland. This intimate experience with the Australian landscape had a profound influence on her future as a composer: its expansiveness, its dramatic changes, and its "indescribable energy". She began composing while still in Longreach, at the age of eight, for the resources she had available: recorder and voice. She returned to Sydney at age 11, and although she was pleased to be reunited with her mother, she missed the beauty of the Outback terrain.
[edit] Education
She studied music at the University of Sydney, where she was one of Peter Sculthorpe's first students. Sculthorpe had a profound influence on her—she said that his music was the first time she had heard music which expressed her experience of the Australian landscape. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree, she received a PhD in composition from the University of York, in England.
[edit] Career
She has taught at the University of Sussex, the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Sydney, where she is currently a professor of composition, Arts Music undergraduate coordinator, Co-chair of Composition, and Chair of the Arts Music Unit of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She has received the Order of Australia for her contributions to music.
Boyd's struggle to maintain funding for music courses in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney was featured in the television documentary Facing the Music. Boyd lost the struggle, with the result that the Department of Music was incorporated into the Sydney Conservatorium (a faculty at the same university) from the start of 2005.
[edit] Music
Many of Boyd's compositions have an East Asian influence, especially the music of Japan (such as the wood flute and the Japanese mode) and Indonesia (such as the gamelan orchestra and the Balinese modes). She is a deeply religious Christian, and many of her works are of a spiritual or meditative nature, such as the a cappella work As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. She has written song cycles, and piano, choral, and chamber music. Her compositions can be found on Tall Poppies and ABC Classics labels.
[edit] References
- Therese Radic. "Anne Boyd", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed November 27 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
