Peter Sculthorpe: String Quartet No 16

Peter Sculthorpe

Born in Tasmania in 1929, Peter Sculthorpe was educated at Launceston Church Grammar School, the University of Melbourne and Wadham College, Oxford. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney. He holds honorary doctorates from Tasmania, Melbourne, Sussex, Griffith and Sydney.
Peter Sculthorpe has written works in most musical forms, and his output relates easily to the unique social climate and physical characteristics of Australia. The most important influences upon him in recent years have been Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island music and culture. His work is discussed in books devoted to him by Michael Hannan and Deborah Hayes, in an autobiography by the composer himself and a biography by Graeme Skinner, Peter Sculthorpe: The Making of an Australian Composer.

String Quartet No 16 (2005)

This work was inspired by From Nothing to Zero, a book of extracts from letters written by asylum seekers in Australian detention centres. With a preface and chapter introductions by Julian Burnside, the book provides heart-rending testimony to the inhumane treatment of refugees, including children, in mandatory detention. The music also addresses the plight of asylum seekers everywhere.

String Quartet No.16 consists of five thematically related movements:

I Loneliness
II Anger
III Yearning
IV Trauma
V Freedom

All the movements are straightforward in structure, and the first, third and fifth movements are freely based upon an ancient love song from Central Afghanistan. The second and fourth movements use a scale similar to that stated in the first, and the fourth movement is based upon rhetorical devices employed in the second.