AustLit

'In the mid-1970s the composer Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014) acquired a petit, detached cottage in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra. The residence at 91 Holdsworth Street was based on one of the simplest variations of a dwelling: an entrance door flanked symmetrically by windows, its ready emotion reminiscent of a child's drawing, a symbol of a house as much as its reality. The building dated from the end of the nineteenth century, but Sculthorpe enjoyed repeating that it originated in the 1840s with a single room for a shepherd, invoking a distant, rustic past, perhaps a very distant past when gods could disguise themselves as shepherds. Associations between the composer and the house became entwined during the four decades of his residence. Informed passers-by might remark to their companions "That's Peter Sculthorpe's house", and leave them with this compound of ideas.' (Publication summary)