In memoriam Peter Sculthorpe, the greatest Australian composer, a friend, an idol

Before anything else, I'd like to say one thing about Peter Sculthorpe: composer, friend, idol, who died last week (August 8). Since he corresponded by email (although he arrived late with this technology), I missed his handwriting. I think he can also be remembered as the composer who had the most beautiful handwriting in the world. I started corresponding with him in the 1990s (still on "written paper"), and his manuscript of Little Passacaglia, the piano piece he wrote and dedicated to me, was still in his handwriting. I have it at home in Spain, if I were there now I would have scanned it and paste it here. I have wanted to write this obituary as an admirer and a friend, but the premiere of my own Chamber Symphony "In memoriam Ainun Habibie" took much of my time (his date of death coincided with the date of my arrival in Indonesia; I received an email from his manager on that date but then I went directly to the rehearsals of mine from the airport), so sorry for this late post. .............................................................................................................................................. Peter Sculthorpe is not "just another composer" for me. He, together with Toru Takemitsu who I also got to know and worked together, was an artist who defined "the classical music of his country", in his case, Australia. Both him and Takemitsu opened up my eyes (I should say ears) that we MUST establish the identity of our nation's classical music by digging deep into our native music ; that's also part of the job of a composer. And for an Australian, it's not an easy job. What is Australian native music? It took him a while to get it into his system. His music has been influenced by all the neighbouring countries' music. He wove Balinese elements into Sun Music III (1967) and Tabuh Tabuhan (1968) and leant towards Japan in Night Pieces (1971) and Koto Music (1973). Such pieces reflected the composer’s prescience that, despite two centuries of British sway, Australia was, geographically if not yet culturally, part of Asia. I then recorded all his piano music up to the year 2006 (he had written a bit more since then) and my CD has been released around that year, as well as Takemitsu's which will be released later this year (2014). In Takemitsu's case, it was really his complete piano music, since I recorded it a few years ago, and he died in 1996. .............................................................................................................................................. Peter Sculthorpe, perhaps Australia's greatest, or at least the most important composer in history, was born in the Invermay, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania, on April 29, 1929. His mother was from Yorkshire and schooled her young son in a love of English poetry. Guided by the music of Delius, the aspiring composer began to write pastorales and to take long walks through the bush. Simultaneously, however, he grew fascinated by the music performed each week at a nearby Chinese market garden. Anyway, I am not going to write his biography here since you can just google it. But I wanna quote what's perhaps his most powerful sayings. .............................................................................................................................................. “I set out to present my own view, my own vision, of Australia. We don’t think of, say, an Australian painting of Australia by Sidney Nolan as an Australian painting. It’s his view of it and it’s the same with me", he said once in an interview. I met him only twice, and those meetings were in London and in Amsterdam, never in Australia, which is quite weird. Everytime I went to Sydney, he was always abroad. It was during those meetings that I became more and more convinced, that my own Rapsodia Nusantara series for piano are pieces that I was born to write. Some of them are commissioned or sponsored, some I wrote purely out of the blue, some enjoyed tremendous recognition, some were only played by a handful of pianists, but those pieces just gotta be written, I know it. .............................................................................................................................................. Thank you Peter. Not only your music lives forever, but your spirit remains within me. O Captain, my Captain ! Your fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize you sought is won (apologies for modifying Walt Whitman's poem). Now you can Rest in Peace.