The Memory of Music by Andrew Ford

Author:Andrew Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

I suppose Edward Cowie had invited me to Wollongong because of my own interests and activities across the arts. While I knew my limits as an actor – I’d had no ambitions in this area since childhood – and had stopped writing poetry after trying to set it to music as a student, I still painted and drew. I’d had a solo exhibition at the Bradford Playhouse before I left England and now I had another in Wollongong. I worked with a mixture of water-colour, ink, pastels and charcoal, and the results were not embarrassing like the poetry, but they also weren’t consistent, depending too much on happy accidents. I had the sense that with a mighty effort I would have improved, but decided my time was better spent writing music. In 1994 I produced my final mixed-media work. It hangs in the spare bedroom of my friend and librettist Sue Smith, and whenever I stay over at her place I recognise both its merits and its shortcomings.

My composing was slow to get going in Australia, at least from a professional point of view. I knew no one and no one knew me. Moreover, I was aware that as a Pom I wouldn’t be automatically welcomed by Australia’s existing composers. A couple of years after I arrived, I was in the green room of the Sydney Opera House and got into conversation with some well-known Australian musicians, all of whom, by now, I’d worked with. One of them referred to me, in passing, as an ‘Australian composer’ – which technically I was, having acquired citizenship earlier that year. ‘He’s not Australian!’ said another, not nastily, but firmly.

Perhaps this is the place to say that I don’t much care for nationalism or patriotism. I didn’t when I lived in England, and I haven’t since I’ve lived in Australia. Nationalism always seems an excuse to exclude people more than welcome them, and while I know that patriotism implies a love of one’s country, I’m never sure what it is I’m meant to love. The people? I don’t know most of them. I love some of those I do know, but some I dislike. The land? Much of the Australian landscape is awe-inspiring, but I seldom feel part of it. Perhaps it would be different if I’d been born here. Yet most days there’s nowhere I’d rather live than my bit of Australia – it’s felt like home almost from day one. Perhaps that is all that patriotism needs to mean, but I suspect there’s more to it than this, and I’m suspicious of whatever that might be.

In my final year living in England I’d seen a bit of Oliver Knussen, both before and after he conducted my Concerto for Orchestra. The last time was in a pub near his home in London, just before my leaving for Australia.

‘The thing about your music,’ he said, ‘is that I can’t pick the influences.’ I was surprised and must have looked it, because he went

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