Mary Mageau
Mary Mageau (1934–2020) was an American-born Australian composer and harpsichordist whose catalogue spans orchestra, chamber music, solo works and voice. From 1974 she made her home in Queensland and became a distinctive voice in Australian contemporary music.
Mary Mageau (1934–2020) received many international awards. These include a silver medal in the Louis Moreau Gottschalk International Composer's Competition, ASCAP Standard Awards granted annually since 1981, and a prize in the 1994 Alienor Harpsichord Concerto Competition for Composers. In 1990 her Triple Concerto was highly commended by the Vienna Modern Masters First Recording Award and released in VMM's Music From Six Continents CD series.
Over her composing career she wrote close to 20 works for large forces – overtures, symphonic works, concertos and music for string orchestra. She also wrote a great many works for solo instruments, particularly piano and harpsichord (her own instrument), chamber works often involving woodwinds, and a number of much-loved vocal works.
Born in the United States, she first arrived in Australia in 1974 as a guest music lecturer. In her new home country she received commissions from Musica Viva, the Queensland Philharmonic, the ABC, the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra and the Australia Council for the Arts. Soloists from the United States also commissioned works, and international orchestras that played and recorded her music include the Hartford, Duluth, Des Moines and Minnesota Orchestras in the USA, and the Slovak and Polish Radio Symphony Orchestras in Europe. Her music has been released on 17 CDs.
The 2005 song cycle Remembering Albany remained her last composition, but she did not retire from artistic life, instead reinventing herself as a writer of poems and novellas. Her writing and nature photography can be found on her website.
Mary Mageau passed away in January 2020 at the age of 85.
Press quotes
Elite Syncopations, from Ragtime for Piano, was a most attractive piece; when playing the work the boundaries between Mageau and Joplin almost disappeared in my mind, and a rather satisfying whole emerged.
Compositions by Mary Mageau appear on
Bizarre or baRock
Elizabeth Anderson explores harpsichord music across four centuries: from Conceição’s raw 17th-century battle piece and traditional Baroque repertoire to jazz, blues, Gershwin and the Beatles with drums and bass. Weird, wild, wacky and wonderful – you’ve never heard the harpsichord like this.
Contemporary Australian Piano
A valuable collection of Australian piano works by some of the country’s most respected and inventive composers, performed by pianist-composer Larry Sitsky.
Homegrown
Themes of nature, motherhood, and a profound spiritual connection to place pervade Homegrown — art song by Australian women composers, performed by soprano Rebecca Cassidy and pianist Alex Raineri.