Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Dulcie Holland circa 1993  
© Julie Ihle

When young Australian music student, Ronan Apcar, discovered Dulcie Holland's handwritten score of Concertino for Piano and Strings in a dusty box in the National Library, he couldn't believe the work was unknown. As a long-time admirer of Dulcie Holland's music, he wanted to hear it played, so set about the long process of getting it scored. He is now bringing it to Sydney at ACO On The Pier in August, with a performance by the Ensemble Apex, conducted by Sam Weller.

"Stylistically, it's quite similar to her other pieces that I've played before," he says, "there are really exciting and crunchy harmonies, spritzy rhythms, lots of beautiful modal melodies, and a clear sense of drama and narrative throughout."¹

With only one handwritten score and a program from 1991 as traces of its existence, the piece was essentially forgotten.

It's not an unusual story when it comes to Dulcie Holland's compositions. She is better known as a music educator; every Australian music student is very familiar with Master Your Theory and Musicianship.

But as well as teacher, arranger, adjudicator, she was also one of Australia's most prolific composers. In her long career spanning over 70 years, she produced over 300 compositions. Her teachers were Frank Hutchens, Roy Agnew, John Ireland and Mátyás Seiber and some of her composition highlights were the film scores for the Commonwealth Department of the Interior promoting Australian life and symphonies for the North Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

However, many of her pieces were for children or teaching purposes and therefore quite short, she often didn't get recognition as a serious composer.

As her career was largely in post-WWII Australia, there were limited opportunities for a composer in Australia. As a working mother, unusual in that time, she had to bypass opportunities and organise her time well. As she told interviewer Margaret Throsby, "You get little snippets of time. So that means shorter pieces. You need great slabs of time to do a symphony."²
Although she was an extrovert, she would ignore the phone, scoff chocolate biscuits for lunch and cancel social engagements, while she got her ideas expressed and scored properly. "The end product is the thing, and if there is a piece of music there… that someone can play, even if it is a child… then I haven't lived in vain."³

Dulcie was my grandmother, and I remember her rambling Californian bungalow in the Sydney suburb of Northbridge being dominated by music, with its pianos, music themed decor and piles of scores and music books. She had plenty of energy, had a passion for life and was always going out to concerts.

She got inspiration for composing from going to concerts. "Every performer you hear gives you insight into the instrument they play or the voice they have. That way you have more insight into writing music."⁴

She also got inspiration from places-particularly the sea-poetry, everyday life or just sitting down at the piano and doodling.

She would be thrilled that a young Australian musician enjoyed playing her works and that her music was still giving pleasure to people.

I'll leave the last word to Dulcie: "Melody is a thing which changes from generation to generation. But a beautiful melody is a thing which belongs to no particular generation, it is a universal thing which nothing could ever spoil and nothing could destroy."⁵

On 9 August at ACO On The Pier, there will be a concert celebrating Dulcie Holland's unearthed Concertino for Piano and Strings to be performed by Ronan Apcar and Ensemble Apex, conducted by Sam Weller-a rare performance of Holland's unheard masterwork. Along with some other of Holland's unpublished solo pieces, there will also be works by Nigel Westlake and Dan Rojas.

Editor's note: The following excerpt is written by Ronan Apcar in correspondence with Julie, regarding his research on Dulcie Holland's Concertino for Piano and Strings. It is published here with permission from Ronan and Julie, to provide further insight into the discovery of the work:

"I first came across the work in one of the big boxes of her manuscripts at the National Library of Australia, when I was trying to get a copy of her Sonata for Piano. That first search leading to the Dulcie Holland Crescent album I think is outlined in an earlier Resonate article here! When Leonard Weiss invited me to feature as soloist with Canberra Sinfonia, I said that I had seen her handwritten manuscript of Concertino for Piano and Strings a year or two ago, and thought it looked great, and why don't we give that a go? Obviously turned into a much bigger thing, having to do the whole transcription, but it was worth it!!!

One important point: we searched as hard as we could to find evidence of any performance of the work. At the time, we didn't, and we hesitantly said it was a premiere. Only in January did I find this cutting in the Archives that I've attached, showing that the Concertino was given its American premiere April 6, 1991 by Selma Epstein who the work was written for. Since they distinguish that Sarah Hopkins' piece is a world premiere, then the Concertino must have been performed before as well, very likely in Australia. But there's no evidence of when or where this was. Also, the April 6, 1991 version is for two pianos (there is no evidence of this arrangement in the NLA). So it's also possible (but less likely) the work was maybe never even performed in its original version with a string orchestra.

Nonetheless, the Concertino was virtually forgotten anyway, so our 2022 performance was kind of a premiere in effect. Really the only evidence of its existence was the score and parts found in the NLA and held by the AMC, as well as this 1991 program note. And more anecdotally, my litmus test for Australian piano repertoire, Michael Kieran Harvey, didn't know Dulcie had written a concerto of any kind and he was actually quite blown away when I played it through for him. I remember that he said, "this has been a revelation!""

Footnotes

1. Cut Common magazine, June 14 2022

2. Holland, Dulcie and Throsby, Margaret, interviewer, audio tape held at the National Archive Australia 1995

3-5. Interview with Dulcie Holland and Hazel de Berg (interviewer). Dulcie Holland interviewed by Hazel de Berg, April 1975. National Library of Australia.