NSW Wagner Society: Andrew Ford – After Wagner

Wagner’s legacy, musical and otherwise, has long been an unavoidable issue for the composers who followed him. Right from the start, there were those who embraced his example (Bruckner, Schoenberg, Debussy) and those who rejected it (Stravinsky, Satie . . . and Debussy again!). 

Even today, more than 130 years after Wagner’s death, many composers still feel strongly drawn to Wagner and his music or strongly repelled by them. 

Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster, and has won awards in all three capacities, including the 2004 Paul Lowin Prize for his song cycle Learning to Howl, a 2010 Green Room Award for his opera Rembrandt’s Wife and the 2012 Albert H Maggs Prize for his large ensemble piece, Rauha. His music has been played throughout Australia and in more than 40 countries around the world. 

He was composer-in-residence with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (1992–94), Peggy Glanville-Hicks Fellow (1998–2000), Australia Council Music Board Fellow (2005–06) and resident composer at ANAM in 2009. In April 2014 he was Poynter Fellow and Visiting Composer at Yale University. 

A former academic, Ford has written widely on all manner of music and published eight books, most recently Earth Dances: music in search of the primitive (2015). He has written, presented and co-produced five radio series, including Illegal Harmonies and Dots on the Landscape, and since 1995 he has presented The Music Show each weekend on ABC Radio National. 

12.30 PM DVD: Lohengrin Act 3 Kaufmann, Harteros, Bayerische Staatsoper/ Nagano 

All welcome – $20 for members, $25 for guests and $10 for students