Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

William Colleran who died recently in London, was the model for a now-vanished breed of music publishers, and became a well-loved and respected figure on the London and European music scene.

Here was a man who cared deeply about the state of the art of composition, and nurtured many of the major and minor figures in contemporary music. He was a publisher who could read a score, and who demanded a copy of a new score before the premiere performance, and who attended early rehearsals as an informed musician; no wonder his publisher, Universal Edition, was able to sign to its catalogue some of the stellar names of the scene.

Through alumni of York University, and with the enthusiastic support of its Professor, Wilfrid Mellers, Colleran became aware of the energy and talent of a number of young Australian composers, and gained their respect and admiration enough to have them change their allegiances to that of Universal Edition. Colleran was devastated when he learned of the tragic death of David Ahern, whom he had contracted.

When the doyen of Universal Edition, Dr Kalmus, turned 80, we ('The Fires of London' - the group I then managed) invited largely through Bill Colleran, some of the leading Universal composers to each contribute a new composition for a Birthday Concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall - and so we premiered new pieces by Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Harrison Birtwistle, and others and called the concert 'A Garland for Dr K'. It was a major event on the London music scene.

Colleran always was an éminence grise at contemporary music festivals, and his generous support for new music was much valued and sought after. Not one given to an equivocal opinion, Bill’s nod was manna to many a young composer. In London in the late '60s and early '70s, there were a number of rare music critics, William Mann of The Times, Andrew Porter of the Financial Times (later to become the Music Critic for The New Yorker for many years, and still a lively presence on the European scene). They and a few publishers such as Bill Colleran for Universal Edition, Michael Vyner of Schott & Co plus resident composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Pierrre Boulez, Michael Tippett, along with crack performing groups such as the Sinfonietta, The Fires of London, and performers such as Alan Hacker, Cathy Berberian, Mary Thomas, Stephen Pruslin and Jane Manning, clearly made London the electric centre of new music at the time.  Bill Colleran was a prime mover and shaker in this milieu, and now is widely mourned.