Welcome to the 2024 International Alfred Hill Festival website. I am your host, festival artistic director Sherry Grant from New Zealand, bringing this festival to you from New Zealand, where Australasian composer Alfred Hill (1869-1960) spent his early years.​

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Alfred Hill (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was born in Melbourne, Australia to a musical family. He was the son of Charles Hill, a hatter and talented violinist, and his wife, Eliza Ann Hulbert, both born in England. In 1872 the family emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand and later in 1875 they moved to Wellington, where Alfred Hill spent most of his early life.

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With his brother John, Alfred Hill travelled to Germany and studied at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1887 and 1891 under Gustav Schreck, Hans Sitt and Oscar Paul. Later he played second violin with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under guest conductors including Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, and Reinecke. The Gewandhaus Orchestra provided incomparable experience and a foundation for Hill's later conducting. Several of his early works were published in Leipzig. At the end of his last term at the Leipzig conservatory, Hill was awarded the Helbig prize as a distinguished student and graduated with a diploma in July 1891. 

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Returning to Wellington, Hill was active as a violin pedagogue, recitalist, chamber music performer, but principally as conductor of choirs and orchestras, including the Wellington Orchestral Society. From 1902 to 1911 Hill travelled between Australia and New Zealand on a regular basis, writing and conducting opera, in particular. His operas Tapu, or a tale of a Maori pah and A Moorish Maid, or queen of the Riffs, written during this time, were performed in both New Zealand and Australia. He eventually settled in Sydney in 1911, becoming the principal of the Austral Orchestral College, and viola player of the Austral String Quartet.

 

In 1913 Hill founded the Australian Opera League with Fritz Hart, as part of an attempt to create an Australian operatic tradition. The League presented Hill's Giovanni and Hart's Pierette in Sydney and Melbourne, but folded soon afterwards. Hill was also a founder of the Sydney Repertory Theatre Society, and a foundation council member (later president) of the Musical Association of New South Wales. While in New Zealand, Hill had been active in the push for a New Zealand Conservatorium of Music, and for the foundation of an institute of Maori studies at Rotarua.

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In 1913 Hill was also appointed to the advisory committee for the establishment of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music (now known as the Sydney Conservatorium of Music), and became its first Professor of Theory and Composition in January 1916. In 1935 he established the Alfred Hill Academy of Music, an institution which was to concentrate on the study of harmony, counterpoint, chamber music and opera. After this enterprise failed and the Academy closed in January, 1937, Hill devoted himself fulltime to composition. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1953 and was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1960.

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Alfred Hill died at the age of eighty-nine, on the 30th October, 1960. During his lifetime he had written more than five hundred compositions, including twelve symphonies, numerous concerti, a mass, seventeen string quartets and eight operas. On his death his manuscripts were donated by his widow, Mirrie Hill, to the Australian Broadcasting Commission's Federal Music Library. His papers were given to the Mitchell Library and his books and instruments to the NSW State Conservatorium. The composition award which now bears his name was also founded by Mirrie Hill in memory of her husband.

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