Author(s): Jillian Graham

Biographies / Memoirs

Margaret Sutherland was one of the most innovative and influential Australian composers. In the first half of the twentieth century, her desire to be both serious composer and mother was atypical, and she faced significant challenges - public and private.

Jillian Graham is a freelance writer, editor and researcher, focusing on the experiences of Australian women composers. Graham was awarded the 2018 Redmond Barry Fellowship and was shortlisted twice for the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship. A trained musician, she sings in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus.

Against the backdrop of an unhappy and unsupportive marriage and a society not yet ready to accept her creative ambitions and strong views on Australia's musical development, Sutherland remained admirably steadfast in pursuing her goals.

She created over two hundred compositions, ceaselessly campaigned on behalf of Australian music and musicians, and led the initial push to construct what is now Arts Centre Melbourne.

In her attempts to redefine beauty in music she used idiosyncratic musical language, being at the mercy of 'sound pictures' and 'floating ideas'.

This book tells her remarkable story, laying bare something of Sutherland's inspiring 'inner song'.