Before and After Corroboree: The Music of John Antill

Although a prolific and much esteemed composer in Australia, John Antill's wider reputation is sustained chiefly by his ballet Corroboree - a work which was perceived to bring an authentic Australian musical style before both a national and international audience for the first time. David Symons traces Antill's development as a composer from his early, pre-Corroboree works through an analysis of the virile, dissonant, primitivist idiom of his magnum opus, to an examination of his later output. The book not only presents a developmental picture of Antill's works, but also demonstrates why they have made him one of Australia's most prominent musical creators of the post-colonial period.