Sitsky Collection

The Sitsky Collection is a comprehensive collection of manuscript pencil scores, drafts of compositions and fair copies of Sitsky's music, dating from 1958 onwards. There are also composition diaries and transcriptions of works by other composers, as well as personal papers and about 200 scores of Russian composers, purchased by Sitsky.

Europe Performing arts

Collection highlights

Larry Sitsky, Arch (Fantasia no. 4) ,1980, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233784206

Key items in the collection

Highlights from this collection demonstrate its historical significance and variety.

The Sitsky Collection contains a comprehensive collection of pencil scores, drafts of compositions, and fair copies dating from about 1958 to 2007.

They include major works such as:

Sonata for flute (1959)
Fantasia for piano (1962)
Woodwind Quartet (1963)
Dimensions (1964)
the opera The Fall of the House of Usher (1966)
Apparitions (1966)
Concerto for Two Pianos (1967)
String Quartet (1969)
the opera Lenz (1970)
the opera Fiery Tales (1975)
The Ten Sephiroth of the Kabbalah (1977)
the opera The Golem (1980)
Music in the Mirabell Garden (1982)
Violin Concerto No 3 (1987)
In Pace Requiescat (1989)
Cello Concerto (1993)
Violin Concerto No 4 (1997)
Trio for Two Cellos and Piano (1999).

Among the other scores are transcriptions from works by:

Bach
Bartok
Busoni
Anton Rubinstein.

There are also a number of composition diaries (1968–1972).

In addition to Sitsky's own writings, there are a small number of published works by other Australian composers, such as:

Roy Agnew
Alfred Hill
Miriam Hyde
Margaret Sutherland
Gordon Watson
Ernest Wunderlich.

Another component is a collection of about 200 scores of Russian composers, which Sitsky purchased for the Library when he visited the Soviet Union in 1977. The bulk of them were published in the 1972 to 1977 period, but there are a small number of older imprints. They include works by Russian composers of the 19th and early-20th centuries, including such famous figures as:

Glazunov
Glinka
Prokofiev
Rachmaninoff
Rimsky-Korsakov
Scriabin
Tchaikovsky.

In addition, there are works of many Soviet composers, such as:

Anatoly Alexandrov
Andrei Eshpai
Reinhold Glière
Dmitry Kabalevsky
Tatiana Nikolayeva
Andrei Petrov
Nikolai Rakov
Yuri Shaporin
Rodion Shchedrin
Vissarion Shebalin
Dimitry Shostakovich
Sergei Taneyev.

The personal papers of Larry Sitsky date from his schooldays onwards and include:

personal and family documents
correspondence with friends, students and organisations
contracts
diaries
files relating to his research and writings
scripts for talks and broadcasts
concert reviews
articles about Sitsky
concert programs
photographs
printed material.

The diaries cover his trips to:

China (1983)
Russia (1977 and 1988)
the United States (1959–1961 and 1989).

The correspondents include:

Roy Agnew
Rosemary Brown
Colin Brumby
Winifred Burston
Nigel Butterley
Frank Callaway
Roger Covell
George Dreyfus
Gwen Harwood
Richard Meale
James Murdoch
James Penberthy
Egon Petri
Vincent Plush
Jan Sedivka
Roger Woodward.

Among the many organisations that had dealings with Sitsky were the:

music publishers:
- J Albert and Son
- Allans Music
- Boosey and Hawkes
various conservatoria
cultural organisations such as:
- the Australia Council
- the Australian Ballet
- the Australian Music Centre
- the Australian Opera
- Musica Viva.

About Larry Sitsky AM

Of Russian Jewish descent, Larry Sitsky (born 1934) was born in Tianjin, China. He was educated at the Tianjin Jewish School and showed precocious talents as a pianist.

In 1951, his family fled China and settled in Sydney.

An extensive curriculum vitae

Sitsky studied the piano at the New South Wales Conservatorium and the San Francisco Conservatorium.

In 1961 he joined the staff of the Queensland Conservatorium, and he was a lecturer in contemporary music at Queensland University.

In 1966 he became Head of Keyboard Studies at the Canberra School of Music and in 1983 he was appointed Head of the Department of Composition.

From 1994 until his retirement in 2005, Sitsky held a Personal Chair in Music at the Australian National University. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1998 and, in the year 2000, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Concert pianist

Sitsky has had a long career as a concert pianist, as well as a teacher. He has frequently performed the great Romantic piano concertos and has had a strong interest in lost or little-known chamber works of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Composer

In the early 1960s, Sitsky emerged as one of the leading avant-garde Australian composers with works such as his:

Wind Quartet (1963)
String Quartet (1969).

With Keith Humble and Don Banks, he founded the Australian Contemporary Music Ensemble, which performed and recorded new Australian works, as well as European and American works.

In his compositions, he has drawn on a wide range of sources, including:

Russian and Armenian folk music
Jewish music
Chinese music
the Second Viennese School
the writings of Ferruccio Busoni.

Sitsky has written:

orchestral music
chamber music
electronic music
choral
vocal music.

Collaborations

He collaborated with the poet Gwen Harwood on several operas, such as:

The Fall of the House of Usher (1965)
Lenz (1970–1974)
Fiery Tales (1974)
The Golem (1976–1980).

Author and editor

Sitsky is the author or editor of:

Background to the collection

In 1972, Larry Sitsky began lending his music manuscripts to the Library for copying. He also donated several of his pencil scores.

The first instalment of his papers, along with additional manuscripts, was purchased in 1977. That same year, the Library received a collection of Russian music he had acquired during a visit to the Soviet Union.

Between 1983 and 2008, the Library purchased 5 more instalments of Sitsky’s papers and manuscripts.

The manuscript and printed music and personal papers of Larry Sitsky are kept together in the Manuscripts Collection at MS 5630. Use the finding aid.

Some of the correspondence in the Sitsky Collection is held under restricted access.

There are copies of many of Sitsky's published scores in the Music Collection.

The collection of Russian music is also held in the Music Collection. It has been catalogued as a collection, but the scores have not been individually catalogued.

This guide was prepared using these references:

Hazel De Berg, Oral history interview with Larry Sitsky, November 1967, TRC 1/313-14
Robyn Holmes and Peter Campbell, Lary Sitsky, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, Macmillan, 2001, vol 23, pp 456–57
Robyn Holmes, Patricia Shaw and Peter Campbell, Larry Sitsky: a bio-bibliography, Westport, Conn, Greenwood Press, 1997
Ruth Lee Martin, Oral history interview with Larry Sitsky, May–June 2001, TRC 3969/7
Patricia Shaw, Larry Sitsky, in The Oxford Companion to Australian Music, edited by Warren Bebbington, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp 518–19