Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Peggy Glanville-Hicks is perhaps one of the most important female composers of the 20th century. Born in Melbourne to an English father and New Zealand-born mother. Encouraged by her mother—an amateur singer and artist—Peggy began composing at the age of seven. She studied composition at the Albert Street Conservatorium, leaving Australia afterwards to study at the Royal College of Music in London (a traveling scholarship she had been awarded additionally allowed her to study in Vienna and Paris). Peggy Glanville-Hicks was the first Australian (and one of the youngest composers represented) to have their music performed at a concert for the International Society of Contemporary Music. Glanville-Hicks moved to New York in 1941 and several years later began her career as a respected critic and commentator on modern music when she published a review of an ISCM festival held in Copenhagen in 1947. Basing herself in the United States, Peggy gained prominence as an “exotic” composer and advocate of performance of new music. Glanville-Hicks served on the junior council of the Museum of Modern Art as well as the director of the Composers’ Forum. Via these positions she initiated several concerts to premiere and promote new music and contributed over 100 articles to the 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

            While making a name for herself as a scholar and reviewer of music, Glanville-Hicks was still breaking barriers and pushing the envelope in her compositions. The Transposed Heads (1954)—an opera commissioned by the Louisville Philharmonic Society—solidified her status as an important composer of her time as well as expressed her interest in Indian music and promoted the fusion of Eastern and Western composition. Glanville-Hicks’ interest in the relationship amongst music forms continued well in to the 60s when she was awarded grants to study the relationships among music forms in the West, the Middle East, and Asia as well as an award devoted to research on the traditional music of Greece. Glanville-Hick’s opera Nausicaa (1960) illustrated this interest when it was performed at the Athens Festival in 1961 with an imported company of Greek-American singers. This performance was broadcast in the USA and received universal praise and recognition for “its lyricism and ingenious orchestration”. Later works of Glanville-Hicks were primarily ballets often created with the assistance of New York choreographer John Butler. Glanville-Hicks’ composing output was greatly limited when a pituitary tumor robbed her of her eyesight later in life. Major surgery in 1969 to remove the tumor restored her eyesight but resulted in a loss of smell.

Towards the end of her life, Peggy Glanville-Hicks returned to Australia permanently in 1975. Her fondness for the Asian inspirations of younger composers led to her being a consultant for the Asian Music Studies at the Australia Music Centre in Sydney. She received an honorary Music Doctorate from the University of Sydney in 1987, and passed away in Darlinghurst, Sydney at the age of 77. Peggy Glanville-Hicks is an important mid-twentieth composer who blurred the culture divides of composition, and the Michigan Philharmonic is excited to be performing her Etruscan Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1954) Sunday, March 18^th during our “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” at the First United Methodist Church in Plymouth. 

via http://musictrust.com.au/