Song of Australia
Caroline Carleton's "Song of Australia" poem won the contest conducted by the Gawler Institute with a prize of ten guineas, and was published in the South Australian Register. The second phase was a contest to compose the melody for the song, and lodge it with the judges within little more than a week! Of the twenty-three entries, Herr Linger's tune (submitted under the pseudonym "One of the Quantity") was announced as the winner on 4 November 1859, the prize again being ten guineas (thousands of dollars in today's values). The song was used in South Australian schools and elsewhere, and a popular gramophone recording was made by Peter Dawson in 1933. Sir Bernard Heinze is reported as much preferring Linger's composition to "Advance Australia Fair", which has been stated as derivative of the German folk song "The Polish Inn". In 1887 W. B. Chinner (son of one of the judges) wrote a choral arrangement of the Song with piano accompaniment, which became popular. The "Song of Australia" was one of four candidates for a National Song put to a plebiscite in 1977 and was the least favourite in every State except South Australia.
Read more about this topic: Carl Linger
Famous quotes containing the words song of, song and/or australia:
“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.”
—Bible: Hebrew The Song of Solomon 2:5.
“Lest all the song notes
pause and break
across a blood-stained throat
gone songless,
turn back.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.”
—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)