The Frontlines of Battle

After the previous issue of Quadrant Music, which commemorated the life and work of Larry Sitsky upon the occasion of his ninetieth birthday—an issue which, I am pleased to report, has been well received throughout musical quarters—it almost seems a shame to return to the frontlines of battle. There is, after all, so much worth celebrating in this country, and yet the great successes of innovative, authentic Australian thinkers are constantly overshadowed by the malicious actions of a loud, dangerous minority. The horror stories recounted in Quadrant‘s current edition by teacher Luke Maffeo are as good a reminder as any that if we do not work hard to preserve Western culture then it will disintegrate around us. And it is because this sublime corpus of achievement is so worth defending that we should all don our armour, raise our standards and charge the enemy. I welcome the fight, since the fight must be had.

Readers may recall that my December column,“Orana to Christmas Dystopia”, aired concerns that Labor’s new national cultural plan, Revive: A Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place, ultimately restricts artistic freedom. The plan seeks to “introduce stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, including to address the harm caused by fake art, merchandise, and souvenirs”. In addition, the 2023-24 Budget allocates $13.4 million over five years “to protect First Nations traditional knowledge and cultural expression and First Nations artists and related workers through the introduction of stand-alone legislation and artist mentorship and training programs”. My fear is that this “stand-alone legislation” will extend the functions of copyright law to control the production of work on Aboriginal themes. For example, if Keith Windschuttle were to write a new critical tract on Aboriginal history and radical Aboriginal activists were to take issue with his research, then, under the legislation that Revive hopes to implement, could legal proceedings be launched against him? In December, I insisted that this question be asked loudly. So, I decided to ask it. I now detail my inquiry and its findings exclusively for Quadrant.

With the generous assistance of Senator Gerard Rennick and his office, I was fortunate to present, on notice, a series of questions to the Department of Arts. Robert Menzies once wrote and spoke extensively of the Australian artist, and so it is a great comfort to me when Liberal Party politicians take a genuine interest in arts policy. Senator Rennick and his team are to be commended for their efforts.

The following questions were put to the Department:

What is “fake art”?

Is it the government’s intention to expand copy­right laws, via “stand-alone legislation”, so as to criminalise the misuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage? If so, how does the government intend to define “misuse”? And will the government adopt in this “stand-alone legislation” the definition of heritage as detailed by the Our Culture, Our Future report?

If a critical tract concerning Aboriginal history were written—perhaps by Geoffrey Blainey or Keith Windschuttle—and it was received poorly by Aboriginal interest groups then, under any new “stand-alone legislation”, could those interest groups take legal action?

Is the government, through this “stand-alone legislation”, attempting to control the art produced by Australian artists for ideological purposes?

Could this “stand-alone legislation” be inverted, and would it consider Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu “fake art”, considering Professor Pascoe’s claims to be of Aboriginal descent?

Similarly, does the government intend to pursue legislation that would protect general Australian knowledge and cultural expressions and prevent the revision of Australian history by interest groups, and safeguard the Australian public from “fake [Australian] art” and history?

How will the $13.4 million be allocated between wages and other spending?

These questions, even the broader among them, are tightly crafted and thus warrant tightly-crafted responses. If the Department had been prepared to engage in good faith, its answers would have addressed my specific contentions. Instead, Senator Rennick’s office received—after the appointed deadline, I should note; no explanation was provided for this tardiness—a general retort that, seemingly by design, was vague and obstructive:

As outlined by the Productivity Commission, more than half of all purchased merchandise and souvenirs with First Nations art and designs are inauthentic or are made without permission from Traditional Owners to use Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.

The abundance of fake or inauthentic “Aboriginal-style” arts and crafts available in shops causes harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as it misappropriates and exploits the stories, imagery, knowledge and heritage embodied in authentic works.

The announcement in Revive commits to develop new standalone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, including to address the harm caused by fake art, merchandise and souvenirs. This will be guided by a First Nations expert working group.

The funding of $13.4 million over five years will assist with protecting First Nations traditional knowledge and cultural expression, and First Nations artists and related workers including through the introduction of stand-alone legislation, and artist mentorship and training program [sic].

Readers can see that the Department made no reasonable attempt to answer the posed questions. That a federal senator’s office could receive such deflective gibberish is an indictment against the Commonwealth.

For a Quadrant Music article, the word music might seem to be starkly lacking. But whilst I have largely approached this fiasco as if I were a repressed historian, there certainly exist circumstances in which both Australian musicians and Australian art music are impacted if Labor’s stand-alone legislation is enacted. Ironically, a serious boon stands to break through the clouds. Even in the last five years, there has been a pernicious rise in the employ of orchestrators by those composers who are unable to independently complete their scores. Frankly, I am reluctant to term these individuals composers. Not time but skill eludes them. There are high-profile concert hall composers in this country who receive commissions worth tens of thousands of dollars, often courtesy of the taxpayer, but who can barely read music. Their names are known in circles, and the orchestrators who maintain their facade are also known. Regrettably—because it is actually regrettable that, through the fraudulent behaviours of a few, a stereotype now tarnishes the collective—a number of them are Aboriginal.

Maybe those who are prepared to tokenise Aboriginal Australians hold a less regretful view. In any case, if no one assisted Havergal Brian to co-write The Gothic, and if Brian Ferneyhough can complete the complexities of his music without significant aid, I fail to see how any Australian concert hall composer, Aboriginal or otherwise, could mount, with integrity, an argument justifying their employ of an orchestrator. Of course, I specify concert hall composer because those writing for the screen are bound by very different circumstances. The successful partnership between John Williams and Herbert W. Spencer, two men of extraordinary talent who together created the sound worlds of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, demonstrates just what a composer and his orchestrator can achieve. But, in the concert hall, the orchestrator leaves a repugnant stench, simply because he is primarily a beast conceived to service commercial considerations, not anything artistic.

Stand-alone legislation combatting “the harm caused by fake art” might, if it were allowed to, serve to put an end to the orchestrator’s ghostly reign. This fake art—fake in the sense that those who predominantly create it are not predominantly credited—is harming the musical ecosystem. Our understanding of just what a composer is and does has been muddied. Commissioning forces, too, be they established institutions or private benefactors, now fund two fees. Offending composers demand greater remuneration from their patrons, knowing that with this they can secretly hire an orchestrator. In theory, commissioners could be using the same sum of money to fund one meritorious Aboriginal composer’s creation of two works, or two meritorious Aboriginal composers of no relation. With respected patron and composer Kim Williams now the Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, perhaps these considerations can be given the weight they deserve by at least one organisation.

More than likely, however, stand-alone legislation would serve not as a boon but as a hindrance. Take, for example, Christopher Sainsbury’s new opera, The Visitors, which premiered last October in a production by Victorian Opera. The work reimagines the landing of the First Fleet from “the First Nations perspective”. (That perspective’s implied uniformity is a discussion for another time.) In developing the opera, librettist Jane Harrison consulted British primary source material. “I wanted to use their words and their observations as much as I could, and then read between the lines and write my reimagined Aboriginal characters.” Admittedly, when I wrote the libretto to my chamber opera, Edward and Richard: The True Story of the Princes in the Tower, I drew fictitious conclusions from various historical ambiguities. But whether The Visitors is taken as historically factual or not is a separate issue. Both Sainsbury and Harrison are Aboriginal Australians. If the opera had been written from a British perspective, by a non-Aboriginal composer and a non-Aboriginal librettist, the latter of whom had seen fit to create Aboriginal characters, how might—to quote directly from those questions submitted to the Department of Arts—“Aboriginal interests groups” react? If they felt culturally misrepresented by the work, insofar as one can precisely define cultural misrepresentation, could stand-alone legislation provide them with legal recourse? Because of the Department’s reticent behaviour, we are no closer to answering this question.

The next step, therefore, is one taken sitting down. With the Albanese government not guaranteed a second term in office, it could be that Arts Minister Tony Burke intends to table Revive’s policy objectives in the form of a bill sooner rather than later. When our stand-alone legislation does eventually come before the House of Representatives, we shall eagerly scrutinise its contents. 

One brief, albeit alarming, point before I conclude. To quote Paul Keating, a man with whom I would not normally find common ground, “The state of the arts in a country goes to the heart of what a nation is.” That Australia’s arts are so encumbered by questions of identity at the expense of quality and authenticity would suggest that our nation is not at all in such a good way. Yet our arts are not yet as ideologically defiled as those of the United Kingdom. The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Young Composers program achieves new, abominable heights. This was an opportunity I had intended to apply for, but I resolved not to after reviewing the application form. The form requires applicants to answer this question: “Please think about the parent or other caregiver who was the highest income earner in your house when you were around fourteen years old. What kind of work did they do?” Applicants are also required to provide their sexuality, gender and ethnicity, as well as their family’s general level of education. All questions are compulsory, and there is no indication that they are for statistical purposes only. What any of this has to do with an applicant’s compositional abilities, I have no idea. This discrimination is egregious; young, aspirational Australian composers must never, ever be exposed to such in their own country.

In this issue of Quadrant Music, we welcome the inaugural contribution of Lucinda Moon. Among the many attainments of her career, Ms Moon served as concertmaster of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra from 1995 to 2008. Writing for Quadrant, her insights into Heinrich Biber’s revolutionary but neglected Mystery Sonatas are both philosophical and accessible. With the occurrence of Easter at the end of this month, the Mystery Sonatas, works which I was not previously familiar with but which I now adore, offer both beauty and introspection. Biber’s music is worth exploring. Take it from me that his Battalia—literally, his battle music—provides a rousing soundtrack for even the most belligerent of composers.  

Alexander Voltz is a composer and founding editor of Quadrant Music: alexandervoltz@quadrant.org.au