Michael Hannan

Michael Hannan studied musicology at the University of Sydney, taking a Bachelor of Arts with honours in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1978. His honours and doctoral theses were on the music of Peter Sculthorpe, and much of his later analytical writing has focused on Australian composers, Sculthorpe and Ross Edwards in particular. His book Peter Sculthorpe: His Music and Ideas 1929–79 was published in 1982 by the University of Queensland Press.

Composition entered his working life in 1972 through jingles and scores for theatre and film. By the late 1970s he was drawn to concert music, especially for the piano, and in 1980 he undertook postgraduate composition studies with Sculthorpe. A Fulbright Postdoctoral Award took him to the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1983–84 for ethnomusicology; while there he also studied composition with Elaine Barkin.

His professional roles have been wide-ranging: lecturer, music education and curriculum consultant, NSW Higher School Certificate examiner, occasional examiner of composition portfolios and theses, transcriber, editor of music terms for the Macquarie Dictionary and A Dictionary of New Words, editorial advisor for Companion to Music in Australia (Currency Press/Cambridge University Press), and Australian advisor for Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (7th edition). He has published many articles, written liner notes, contributed to volumes such as the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, given papers at conferences in Australia and overseas, and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Southern California in 1990.

As a keyboard player he has worked with rock groups, in the theatre, and in performances of his own music.