Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush: Gothic Landscapes in Bush Studies and Picnic at Hanging Rock

In 2008, renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe remarked that almost everything he has written since the early 1960s has been influenced by Indigenous music “because that was a music … shaped by the landscape over 50,000 years.” His preference for accumulating “an effect of relentless prolongation” through the use of long drones has seen his music fail, until recently, to appeal to an Australian ear attuned to Bach and Mozart. His aim, however, has not been to satisfy the European-trained ear, but to “mirror the Australian outback”; to capture a sense of time and space that many Australians have repeatedly failed to access.