George Richard Tibbits (7 November 19336 July 2008) was an Australian composer and architect. Tibbits was born in

Boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In c ...

, Western Australia, to a family of mining prospectors, and when his father returned wounded from the First World War, the family moved to Colac, Victoria, to take up dairying. He studied architecture at the University of Melbourne, and eventually taught urban studies and architectural history there and established the urban studies program. He initiated the first heritage conservation study, the Beechworth Historical Reconstruction Project. He was also prominent in opposing the former Housing Commission's slum reclamation project in inner Melbourne. He was not formally trained in music and worked outside of the main channels of art music production in Australia. At age 16 he wrote his first major work, ''Otway Ranges Symphony''. His early works show the influence of his interest in the music of Indonesia, as well as American modernists such as

Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...

and

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

Thérèse Radic Thérèse Radic (born 1935) is an Australian musicologist and playwright. Early life and education Maureen Therese O'Halloran was born in Footscray, Victoria in 1935 and grew up in Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne wit ...

, "George Tibbits". ''

Grove Music Online ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

''. He would often jot down pieces of tunes while travelling on public transport. Late in the 1950s, he concentrated on works depicting what he referred to as the 'brutalist' aspects of urban civilization, but by the 1960s had returned to a more lyrical style. He became more interested in rock and pop music after a 1965 trip to England to work on urban planning. Later compositions incorporate elements of parody and

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

. He set some poems by Vin Buckley to music for soprano and orchestra, as ''Golden Builders''. ''1976'' was a setting of a 1906 newspaper article describing a massacre of aborigines in Gippsland. He wrote 45 works in total, and all but one were given performances by professional orchestras or chamber groups. They include 5 string quartets, an octet for wind called ''Battue'', and other works. In 1975 he won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. Tibbits died in 2008, aged 74. Ten days before his death, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Architecture by the University of Melbourne.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tibbits, George 1933 births 2008 deaths 20th-century Australian musicians 20th-century classical composers Architects from Melbourne Australian classical composers Australian male classical composers University of Melbourne alumni University of Melbourne faculty People from Boulder, Western Australia Winners of the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award 20th-century Australian male musicians