December 07, 2000

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Plain songs
Shaping landscapes into sound
Barry Conyngham, one of Australia's leading composers, sees shapes and patterns in not just his hands moving over the keys, but in the Australian landscape that informs his music.

Australian composer Barry Conyngham: "The landscape has this sense of the never-ending. In my music, you get a long flat plane of sound, and then there will be an event that will come," in the same way that Uluru looms up on the horizon, or a bushfire flares in dry, windy summer. (Staff photo by Jon Chase)

Copyright 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College