Robert Watson Hughes AO MBE (27 March 19121 August 2007) was a Scottish-born Australian composer. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures.
Hughes wrote orchestral works, music for ballet and film, some chamber works and an opera that has never been performed. While some of his works are available in published form, there are a number of well-crafted orchestral works that were recorded but never commercially published. Like other composers of his generation, including Dorian Le Gallienne, Raymond Hanson and Margaret Sutherland, Hughes has been considered by musicologists to write in a style reminiscent of the English pastoral school. However, Hughes listened to a wide range of music and surrounded himself with a variety of musical influences which included Debussy, Roussel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Sibelius and Bartók.
Hughes was also a champion for other Australian composers, through roles that drew on his administrative skills. His own music has of recent times only infrequently been heard either in the concert hall or on recordings. However, his music was earlier championed by many notable conductors including Sir Bernard Heinze, Sir Eugene Goossens, Willem van Otterloo, John Hopkins – and overseas by Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Norman Del Mar, Josef Krips, Walter Susskind, and Sir Colin Davis.
Life and career
Robert Watson Hughes was born in Leven, Fife, Scotland, on 27 March 1912. His father Joseph Hughes, a widower and retired fishmonger, emigrated to Melbourne with his children in 1929, when Robert Hughes was 17 years old.
Hughes first became passionate about music through attendance at concerts, opera performances and radio broadcasts as a child. Composition was his primary interest from the start, and while he did receive a little tuition in piano, it was purely for compositional interest. He taught himself to read music, and learned orchestration from books.
After moving to Australia, he worked as a costing clerk in a Melbourne clothing factory to support himself, while attending as many concerts as possible. By 1938 his early compositions had been noticed by the conductor Sir Bernard Heinze, and it was Heinze’s interest in his music that allowed Hughes to pursue composing seriously. He also had some lessons from Fritz Hart.
A number of Hughes' orchestral works were performed at public concerts from 1939 but his enlistment in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) following the outbreak of World War II put an end to his compositional activity for the next few years. He served in New Guinea, Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands. The tone poem Estivall was premiered during the 1941 concerts of Australian music conducted by Bernard Heinze.
Hughes was demobilised in 1945 and returned to Melbourne. He resumed his job as costing clerk, but subsequently accepted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's offer of a position as an assistant music librarian and writer. He would remain with the ABC until his retirement in 1976.
In October 1950, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Federation, the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, announced a Jubilee Symphony Competition "open to all natural-born and naturalised British subjects", with a prize of £1000. Composers had until June 1951 to compose a symphony with a maximum duration of 40 minutes. Similar competitions for literature and art were also announced with similar prize money, but unlike the symphony competition, these limited participants to Australian citizens only. There was an additional stipulation in the music competition: "If the winner is not a natural-born or naturalised Australian, a special prize of £250 will be offered for the best entry submitted by an Australian citizen". The judging panel comprised three British musicians: Sir Arnold Bax (then Master of the Queen's Music), Sir John Barbirolli and Eugene Goossens. First prize was awarded to an obscure English composer David Moule-Evans, and the "special" second and third prizes in the competition were awarded to Hughes and Clive Douglas respectively.