Vale Joyce McGrath
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BIOGRAPHY OF A COMPOSER
Born in Melbourne in 1912, Peggy Glanville-Hicks studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams from 1933–36, with Egon Wellesz in Vienna in 1936 and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1937. She emigrated to the United States in 1941, becoming a critic for the New York Herald Tribune from 1947–55, the administrator and sometime director of the Composers’ Forum for most of the decade of the 1950s, and the composer of chamber works and concertos successfully performed and recorded in New York. She emigrated again, to Greece, in 1960, where her opera Nausicaa was performed at the Athens Festival in 1961. Her final opera, Sappho, was completed in 1963, and two ballets followed, but surgery for a brain tumor in 1966 effectively ended her career as a composer. She remained in Greece until 1975, when she returned to Australia. She died in Sydney in 1990.
Glanville-Hicks’s life, works, travels, loves, friendships and activism are outlined in my biography, Peggy Glanville-Hicks: Composer and Critic, published by the University of Illinois Press in 2019. On this site are images depicting her homes, travels, colleagues, friends and family, and a blog with news and commentary on aspects of her life and work, such as the origins of her song Come, Sleep, her friendship with Robert Graves, the ancient Greek artefacts in her possession and her contribution to the landmark recordings of Moroccan music made by Paul Bowles.
Suzanne Robinson
Melbourne, 2026
Works
COMPOSER
Glanville-Hicks was the composer of operas, ballets, orchestral and chamber works, and is best known for her Sonata for Harp, Letters from Morocco and the early songs. Her greatest success was the performance of her opera Nausicaa at the Athens Festival in 1961, an event that brought her worldwide attention and publicity. Most of her works have been recorded. In her lifetime the harp sonata was recorded by Nicanor Zabaleta, the Etruscan Concerto (for piano) by Carlo Bussotti and the Concerto Romantico (for viola) by Walter Trampler.
Writings
MUSIC CRITIC
Appointed by Virgil Thomson to the New York Herald Tribune in 1947, Glanville-Hicks continued to write music criticism for the paper until 1955, once Thomson was replaced by Paul Henry Lang and she sought more opportunities as a composer. In total, she contributed more than 500 reviews to the Tribune, mainly of instrumentalists and new music. Modelled on the acerbic yet witty style of Thomson, her reviews are unflinching and characteristically colourful.
Concerts
ADMINISTRATOR
From 1950 and for most of the decade of the fifties, Glanville-Hicks was the linchpin of the Composers’ Forum in New York, coordinating six or seven concerts per year and liaising with a board of esteemed composers including Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland. Composers who appeared at Forum concerts in this decade include John Cage, George Antheil, Elliott Carter and Carlos Surinach. Glanville-Hicks also arranged other concerts, raising the funding, finding the performers and arranging the programme; among these concerts were landmark performances of new works for percussion.
ON THIS SITE
IMAGES OF A LIFE
“A Ping, Qualified by a Thud”. Glanville-Hicks writing about Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes in 1948.
ON THIS SITE
BLOG
News about performances, recordings and editions of works by Glanville-Hicks and comment on aspects of her life and works.
THE MUSIC
RECORDINGS
Glanville-Hicks ensured that many of her works were recorded during her lifetime, including Nausciaa (by the soloists and ensemble from the first performance in 1961) and the Sonata for Harp (by Nicanor Zabaleta). Below are some of the recordings currently available.
Etruscan Concerto
Played by Keith Jarrett
Full of verve, and easily the best recording of Glanville-Hicks's piano concerto. With works by Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. MusicMasters, 2008.
Three Madrigals
Sung by the Astra Choir
The first recording of the Madrigals from the 1950s by the Melbourne-based Astra Choir, conducted by John McCaughey, who prepared a new edition. New World, 2023.
Sonata for Harp
Played by Marshall McGuire
Dating from the 1990s, this is a classic recording and a bestseller. Tall Poppies, TP071.
Concertino da Camera
Played by the Tall Poppies Ensemble from Sydney
Tall Poppies Ensemble - Geoffrey Collins (flute/piccolo), Cathy McCorkill (clarinet), John Harding (violin), Esther van Stralen (viola), David Pereira (cello), Daryl Pratt (percussion), Roger Brook (bassoon), Ian Munro (piano). TP133, 2005.
Major performances
The highlight of Glanville-Hicks's career was the performance of her opera Nausicaa in Athens in 1961. Other highlights include the premiere of Letters from Morocco in New York in 1953, conducted by Leopold Stokowski and the staging of her opera The Transposed Heads in Louisville in 1954.
READ MORE
Read about the composer …
PUBLICATIONS
There are have been several biographies of the composer: Wendy Beckett’s Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Sydney, 1992), James Murdoch’s Peggy Glanville-Hicks: A Transposed Life (Pendragon Press, 2002) and Suzanne Robinson’s Peggy Glanville-Hicks: Composer and Critic (University of Illinois Press, 2019). Victoria Rogers has written about the music in The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Ashgate, 2009). Virgil Thomson provides a lively portrait of her in his autobiography, Virgil Thomson (1966) and there are more candid comments about her in New York in the 1950s in the diaries of Anaïs Nin. Deborah Hayes lists almost all of Glanville-Hicks’s writings, as well as writings about her, in her bio-bibliography, published by Greenwood in 1990.
For permission to perform or record Glanville-Hicks’s music or to publish extracts from her music or writings contact the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers’ Trust.