Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Spirituality & religious music in Australia

The music for the 1947 Royal Wedding was directed by William McKie, a Melbourne-born organist whose antiphon ‘We wait for thy loving kindness, O Lord’ is now a choral staple. McKie was typical of his time in having a background in church music, and that extends to later composers such as Malcolm Williamson and Nigel Butterley. Australia has also produced some distinguished composers of liturgical music such as Percy Jones, Roger Heagney, Richard Connolly and Werner Baer.

The decline of ‘organised’ religion since the 1960s sparked an increased interest in broader aspects of spirituality. For Australian composers, as elsewhere, that has meant a certain amount of ‘scented candle’ minimalism. More importantly, there has been some exploration of non-European – specifically Aboriginal and Asian – spiritual traditions and an increasingly sophisticated synthesis of these with Western traditions in the works of Nigel Butterley, Ross Edwards, Anne Boyd and others. There are also composers who work firmly within their inherited traditions. Much ostensibly spiritual music is vocal, but some composers use instruments to contemplate spiritual concerns and ideas.

Representative Works