Broadstock, Brenton, (Thomas)

Broadstock, Brenton, (Thomas), Australian composer and teacher; b. Melbourne, Dec. 12, 1952. He studied at Monash Univ. (B.A., 1976), Memphis (Tenn.) State Univ. (M.M., 1980), the Univ. of Sydney (with Sculthorpe; postgraduate composition diploma, 1981), Trinity Coll. in London (A.Mus., 1981), and the Univ. of Melbourne (D.Mus., 1989). In 1988 he served as the first composer-in-residence of the Melbourne Sym. Orch. and in 1989 joined the faculty of the Univ. of Melbourne. He publ, the vol. Sound Ideas: Australian Composers born since 1950 (Sydney, 1995). In 1994 he received the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize and in 1999 the Don Banks Award. In his music, Broadstock follows a stylistically diverse course frequently marked by adventuresome harmonies, dense and complex textures, and aleatorie structures. In his opera Fahrenheit 451 (1992), he explores the potentials of electronic sound. He also reveals a deep social consciousness in such scores as his first 3 syms.: No 1, Toward the Shining Light (1988), was prompted by the severe mental and physical handicaps of his first-born son; No. 2, Stars in a Dark Night (1989), was inspired by the letters of Ivor Gurney; and No. 3, Voices from the Fire (1991), was his coming to terms with genocide.