The Australian composer David Lumsdaine has died. He was 92.

Born in in 1931 and raised in Paddington in Sydney’s inner east, Lumsdaine, a pianist at first, studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music (as it was then known), graduating in 1952 after working as a tram conductor to support his studies.

He then moved to London in the early 1950s (to study under the Hungarian-British composer Mátyás Seiber) and there shared a flat with fellow expatriate and poet Peter Porter, with whom he collaborated on several projects including the cantata Annotations of Auschwitz (1964).

David Lumsdaine, 1931–2024

In London he studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley. In 1970 he took a lecturing position at Durham University, where he founded and directed its Electronic Music Studio. In 1981 he took a post as senior lecturer at King’s College London.

Lumsdaine disowned the works he composed prior to Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). Among his best-known The orchestral works are Salvation Creek with eagle and Hagoromo (1974 and 1977 respectively), the former inspired by his reflections on Australia’s natural environment; the latter by the Japanese Noh play of the same name. His Curlew in the mist, for solo shakuhachi, was inspired by his...