Art music in Australia has always reflected the dominant social and cultural values of its time. As with all forms of art, the context of music making significantly influences the evolution of musical practice, from concept and narrative through to techniques and performance. In the twenty-first century, the zeitgeist of ‘our time and place’ is dominated by two global issues: the climate crisis and social justice. Both issues are strongly influencing the evolution of art music in Australia, shaping new directions in creative practice, informing conceptual frameworks, and guiding curatorial and collaborative approaches to programming and mentorship. This chapter will focus on how these issues are influencing curatorial and creative practices in Australian art music today, using works, projects and programs from the 2010s and early 2020s as examples.

A large amount of Latin American popular, folk, and art music circulated in the United States during the twentieth century. It was not just popular music composers that had dialogue with it; classically trained composers such as Leonard Bernstein also did. However, more than the music tradition that Bernstein absorbed into his compositional language in works such as On the Town (1944) and West Side Story (1957), this chapter argues that Latin American music also served as a medium to express Bernstein’s ideas and feelings about the US socio-political and cultural landscape. Furthermore, the chapter shows that Bernstein’s dialogue and collaboration with Latin American composers at the Tanglewood Music Festival, conducting the New York Philharmonic during the Latin American tour (1958), and performing Latin American music works at the Young People’s Concerts (1958−72), all contributed to and enhanced his vision as a cultural broker.

This chapter considers the work of a series of twentieth-century Welsh composers, including Daniel Jones, Grace Williams, William Mathias, Alun Hoddinott, Karl Jenkins and Rhian Samuel. It draws on their compositions and their writings about music to interrogate the question of whether musical qualities or characteristics that might be identified as distinctively Welsh can be discerned in their output. It explores the influence of Welsh landscapes, history and concepts, such as the notion of hiraeth (longing), on the ways in which they have drawn on or sought to reflect their homeland in their compositions. It reveals that while many of these composers were uneasy about identifying a distinctively Welsh school of composition, some level of engagement with their nationality or sense of Welshness was a common trait, albeit manifested in different ways. Several common themes emerge, including the importance of a sense of place and ideas about the past.