“Heritage” program note
To the average young Australian musician today, the name Dulcie Holland conjures up memories of music theory, harmony writing and musicianship training materials, however her main career focus was that of a composer. A close, life-long friend of Miriam Hyde (and the organist at Miriam and Marcus’ wedding in 1938), Dulcie Holland was born in Sydney in 1913. She studied piano (with Frank Hutchens), cello (with Gladstone Bell) and composition (with Alfred Hill) at the New South Wales State Conservatorium, before travelling to England to study composition at the Royal College of Music under John Ireland. A promising first year saw her win the 1938 Cobbett Prize with her Fantasy trio for violin, ‘cello and piano as well as the Blumenthal Scholarship, but at the outbreak of WWII, on the advice of her parents, she returned home to Sydney, although travelling back to England some years later, with her young family, to study with serialist composer Matyas Seiber. In 1940, Holland married conductor Alan Belhouse, and while she continued to compose under her maiden name, she also published a number of children’s books under her married name of Dulcie Belhouse. Holland composed a broad range of solo and chamber instrumental works, choral and orchestral works, as well as film music for over 40 documentaries on Australia with the Department of Interior. Amongst other awards, Holland received the AO in 1977, and together with Miriam Hyde she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University in 1933.
Today we are performing the first two movements of Holland’s Trio for piano, violin and cello. This trio was written in 1944, and has been described as ‘one of the greatest treasures of Australian music’ (Australian Music Centre). The first movement opens with a low, dark, highly chromatic ostinato in the piano, comparable to Prokofiev’s Sonata in F minor for violin and piano, which was premiered several years later in 1946. Out of this ostinato rises the cello and then the violin, like the first light of dawn on a bleak landscape. The three lines work towards a climactic, tenuto version of the opening ostinato theme. A warm, richly chromatic post-romantic bridge passage opens out to the second thematic group, featuring a falling theme in the strings over a rising lydian scale in the piano. The texture thins out to a solo line in the cello, which connects to a statement of the first theme in the development, gradually rising to a fever pitch, before giving way to the second theme in the strings, accompanied by sweeping arpeggios in the piano. A military-like rhythmic ostinato section gradually gives way to the opening dark, quiet, chromatic ostinato, before rising and being swept away into the horizon like a flock of birds rising from the surface of a billabong. The second movement, Fast, has the feeling of a hunt, with its quick compound meter and the opening theme resembling a bugle call. The texture contains hints of medieval modality, together with added 2nds and 4ths, and open 5ths, in contrast with the rich late romantic chromaticism of the tranquil middle section.
Dulcie Holland, 1939. Photograph by Dorothy Welding. Acc03.113/1, Papers of Dulcie Holland, MS 6853, National Library of Australia.
To purchase a copy of the score, please visit the Australian Music Centre.