‘Life’s Major Crossroads’: Study and Career Paths of Four Australian Women Composers at the Royal College of Music in the 1930s

Abstract

Several Australian women composers were among the legions of women musicians who set out to 'try their fortune' in London in the 1930s only to have their study and career options curtailed by the rollercoaster of appeasement and then war. The most prominent of them - Miriam Hyde from Adelaide, Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Esther Rofe from Melbourne, and Dulcie Holland from Sydney - each found themselves in the grip of the twin pincers of family anxiety, on the one hand, and the prospect of bombing and hardship on the other. Despite successful studies and the networks and opportunities they gained in the avenues of composition for film, ballet and concerts, three of these women were obliged by f..