Robert Hughes

Who was Robert Hughes?

Robert Watson Hughes AO MBE was a Scottish-born Australian composer. His music has been characterised as muscular, assertive, pugnacious, with a dark, troubled, even driven quality; but it was also deeply sensitive, lyrical and tender. His capacity to view a complex landscape of diverse musical activity with clarity and with wisdom has been noted. He was said to have a unique understanding of tonality. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures. He was fascinated by unorthodox divisions of tones and semitones in scales.

Hughes wrote orchestral works, music for ballet and film, some chamber works and an opera that has never been performed. While some of his works are available in published form, there are a number of well-crafted orchestral works that were recorded but never commercially published. Like other composers of his generation, including Dorian Le Gallienne, Raymond Hanson and Margaret Sutherland, Hughes has been considered by musicologists to write in a style reminiscent of the English pastoral school. However, Hughes listened to a wide range of music and surrounded himself with a variety of musical influences which included Debussy, Roussel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Sibelius and Bartók.