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Elder Professor of Music

Charles Bodman Rae, MA(Cantab.), PhD(Leeds), DMus(Adel.), ARCM, FCLCM, FRSA

Charles Bodman Rae (b.1955) is a composer, pianist, conductor and author, who was born in England to a family of Scottish and German origins. Since 2001 he has been the seventh Elder Professor of Music at the University of Adelaide (Australia's senior chair in music) and Director/Dean of the Elder Conservatorium of Music (Australia's first music institution).

After private piano studies with Dame Fanny Waterman, Founder of the Leeds International
Pianoforte Competition, he read music at the University of Cambridge (Sidney
Sussex College), whilst also studying composition in Oxford with Dr Robert Sherlaw Johnson (with whom he also studied the piano works of Messiaen). He remained at Cambridge for a year of postgraduate studies in composition with Professor Robin Holloway. Also active as a conductor during these years, he was the youngest competitor at the 5th Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin, and undertook conducting studies in Hilversum with Sir Edward Downes.

On leaving Cambridge he was appointed in 1979 to a permanent lecturership at the City of Leeds College of Music. From 1981 to 1983 he held a postgraduate scholarship in composition from the Polish Government, enabling him to live and work in Warsaw attached, as visiting composer, to the Chopin Academy of Music. During this time he developed a close association with Witold Lutoslawski, which lasted until the composer's death in 1994. This association led to a doctoral  thesis (on Lutoslawski's compositional technique), and has resulted in many publications, in English and in Polish (books, articles, editions, etc.).

On returning from Warsaw, in 1983, he had been appointed Lecturer in Composition and Analysis at the City of Leeds College of Music; in 1992 he joined the senior management as Head of School of Composition and Creative Studies, and subsequently became Head of Academic Studies and Development. During these years he became active as a broadcaster, writing and presenting music programmes for BBC Radio 3. In 1993 he was Visiting Composer to the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (University of Cincinnati).

In 1997 he was appointed to the senior management role of Director of Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Whilst at the RNCM he was active in the affairs of the Federation of British Conservatoires (now Conservatoires UK), the Association of European Conservatoires, and was elected to the committee of the National Association for Music in Higher Education.

In 2001 he moved to Australia to take up his dual appointment in Adelaide. He gave his Australian debut, as both composer and pianist, during the 2002 Adelaide Festival of Arts. In the 2004 Adelaide Festival his String Quartet no.2 was premiered in a live broadcast by the Australian String Quartet (in the Beethoven Songlines Series which he curated and which received the accolade of the APRA/AMC 2005 Classical Music Award for "Outstanding Contribution by an Organisation").

Also in 2005 he received the inaugural Witold Lutoslawski Medal presented at the Royal Castle in Warsaw by the Polish film director, Andrzej Wajda, on behalf of the Lutoslawski Society and the Polish Ministry of Culture.

Charles Bodman Rae is a member of the Performing Rights Society, the Royal Musical Association, and holds Fellowships of Leeds College of Music and the Royal Society of Arts. He has been a federal director of the Australian Music Examinations Board, and is a non-executive director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 he was elected Chair of the Academic Board of the
University of Adelaide and is thus, ex officio, also a member of the Council of the University of Adelaide.

He is active in three areas of research: original composition; contemporary Polish music (particularly Lutoslawski); and connections between music and bells. The latter interest has inspired several compositions and was the topic of a ground-breaking nine-hour series that he was commissioned to write and present for BBC Radio 3.

Selected Publications:

Compositions (selected): Primum Mobile, for orchestra (1974); Six Verses of Vision, for soprano and chamber ensemble (1976); String Quartet no.1 (1981); Jede Irdische Venus, for piano (1982); Sonata for Guitar (1983); Donaxis Quartet (1987); Fulgura Frango, for 2 pianos (1987); String Quartet no.2 (2003).

Books:

The Music of Lutoslawski (London, Faber and Faber, 1994);

Muzyka Lutoslawskiego (Warsaw, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996);

The Music of Lutoslawski (revised/expanded 3rd edn.: London, Omnibus, 1999).

Book Chapters:

'Lutoslawski as internationalist', in Lutoslawski: Narodowy Kompozytor?, ed. Maciej Jablonski (Poznan, University of Poznan Press, 2005);

'The role of the major-minor chord in Panufnik's compositional technique;, in Andrzej Panufnik's Music and its Reception, ed. Jadwiga Paja-Stach (Krakow, Musica Iagellonica, 2003);

'Lutoslawski's Sound World: a World of Contrasts', in Lutoslawski Studies, ed. Zbigniew Skowron Oxford, OUP, 2001);

'Swiat dzwiekowy Lutoslawskiego: swiat kontrastow', in Estetyka I styl tworczosci Witolda Lutoslawskiego, ed. Zbigniew Skowron (Krakow, Musica Iagellonica, 2000);

Articles (selected):

'Research issues in music and music education', keynote address in AARME Conference Proceedings 2002 (Adelaide, Australian Association for Research in Music Education, 2002);

'Bell', in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd.edn., Vol.3 (London, Macmillian, 2001);

'Lutoslawski', in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd. edn., Vol.15 (London, Macmillan, 2001);

'Organizacja wysokosci dzwiekow w muzyce Lutoslawskiego', (Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences), Muzyka XL/1-2 (1995).