- George Tibbits (composer)
George Richard Tibbits (
November 7 1933 ,Boulder, Western Australia -July 6 2008 ) cite news|url=http://www.theage.com.au/national/a-thoroughly-modern-creative-mind-20080731-3o01.html?skin=text-only|title=A thoroughly modern creative mind|last=Polis|first=Talis|coauthors=Reed, Dimity|date=2008-08-01|work=The Age |accessdate=2008-08-04] was anAustralia n composer andarchitect .Tibbits was born in Boulder, to a family of mining prospectors, and when his father returned wounded from the First World war, the family moved to Colac, Victoria, to take up dairying. He studied architecture at the
University of Melbourne , [cite news |url=http://dozer.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/cfa/cfa.php?view_cfa=12|title=Guide to George Tibbits' Papers|last=Agostino|first=Elizabeth|date=2002-10-04|publisher=University of Melbourne |accessdate=2008-07-20] and eventually taughturban studies and architectural history there and established the urban studies program. He initiated the first heritage conservation study, theBeechworth Historical Reconstruction Project. He was also prominent in opposing the former Housing Commission's slum reclamation project in inner Melbourne.He was not formally trained in music and worked outside of the main channels of art music production in Australia. At age 16 he wrote his first major work, "Otway Ranges Symphony". His early works show the influence of his interest in the
music of Indonesia , as well as American modernists such asMilton Babbitt andJohn Cage .Thérèse Radic, "George Tibbits". "Grove Music Online".] He would often jot down pieces of tunes while travelling on public transport. Late in the 1950s, he concentrated on works depicting what he referred to as the 'brutalist' aspects of urban civilization, but by the 1960s had returned to a more lyrical style. He became more interested in rock and pop music after a 1965 trip to England to work on urban planning. Later compositions incorporate elements ofparody andcollage . He set some poems by Vin Buckley to music for soprano and orchestra, as "Golden Builders". "1976" was a setting of a 1906 newspaper article describing a massacre of aborigines inGippsland . He wrote 45 works in total, and all but one were given professional performances by orchestras or chamber groups. They include 5 string quartets, an octet for wind called "Battue", and other works.References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.