Mirrie Hill: Three Aboriginal Dances (1950) - 3. Nalda Of The Echo

Abstract

Mirrie Hill (1892-1986) hailed from a Jewish family of European background. Her household, and therefore upbringing, was saturated with the great German masters. In this regard it is curious that later in her life - partly thanks to C. P. Mountford (an early anthropologist) and also to her husband's interest in Maori music of New Zealand - Hill in turn became fascinated by Australian Aboriginal music, especially music from Arnhem Land. Could it be that a member of one persecuted minority was drawn to that of another similarly disadvantaged group of people? Certainly she seemed not to be drawn to the idea of founding a typically Australian school of composition. As Hill herself observed: I think the feeling of most of us is that we prefer to be without a label. It's the old story that people have an idea that nothing good can come out of our own country. They hear 'Australian music' and switch off the radio. Guite apart from that, we're not writing in any Australian idiom or in any Australian tradition, so why [the] label? Put our music with the other if it's good it will be accepted and if it's bad - well, it still shouldn't be labelled Australian. Elsewhere, Hill also made clear that apart from attempting to get some rhythmic ideas notated accurately, it was impossible to notate in Western tunings and in equal temperament the inflections of Aboriginal music that she heard on tapes apparently supplied to her by Mountford. Nevertheless, the Three Aboriginal Dances for solo piano successfully capture some elements of Indigenous Australian music, albeit on the piano. It is interesting in this regard that at the head of the score the composer writes 'composed and arranged by Mirrie Hill. Although harmonised in a conventional Western fashion, there are effective and affecting moments, such the opening of the first piece (marked moderato), the suggestion of tribal dance in the second (allegro), and the painting of the vast expanse of the bush in the last (largo).