Peter Sculthorpe

Landscape II

The piano may be amplified. This, however, is necessary only when the work is performed with its companion piece, Landscape I, for amplified piano and pre-recorded tape.

Landscape II was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia. In a sense, I first thought about Landscape II during the late sixties, at a time when I was living in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. After making calls upon the Abbot of a nearby Shinto shrine, I became preoccupied with what seemed to be schizoid behaviour in the Japanese: the embracing of two religions, and the tearing between the two. I related this to my own situation, to the tearing inside me between Australia and Europe, and also between Australia and Asia. The work, then, is influenced by both Japanese attitudes and music, by the Balinese gamelan and by Australian Aboriginal chant. Its four movements are not unlike meditations, often with a feeling of suspension of time; and the natural world is ever-present, especially through the sounds of insects and the occasional cries of birds. All the same, the music is concerned with landscapes of the heart and mind as much as with their physical presence. Peter Sculthorpe