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Abstract
The present study examines the electroacoustic music of Don Banks within the framework of a) previous analytical studies of his compositional process, and b) the impact of emerging music technologies. Like other composers of his time, Banks was influenced by trends and artistic ideas in Europe and North America in the post-war period. Under the tutelage of Matyas Seiber, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, and Milton Babbitt, Banks produced a number of post-tonal chamber works,which have become his most investigated pieces. However, by necessity, fortuity, and inclination, Banks also wrote in a variety of other styles. He was a leading performer of bebop in Australia and this interest eventually led to a number of third-stream works. After a move to London, he wrote a large amount of music for feature films and documentaries. The last ten years of Banks' life were devoted to the composition of electronic music and the design and promotion of music synthesisers and computers, which included the EMS VCS1 and VCS3 and the Australian Qasar II and Qasar Multimode 8. For a successful mid-career composer, an interest in electronic music was not only controversial, it was expensive and time-consuming.
Given this unexpected change of direction, the 'how' and 'why' of Banks' electronic music became the focus of this thesis. Two questions were asked: what was Banks able to achieve with the use of electronic instruments that he could not achieve with acoustic instruments?; and, how did he incorporate this element into an already eclectic approach to composition? The study demonstrates that Banks' interest in electronic music was a purposeful movement towards obtaining the sounds he wanted, and an attempt to bring together a fractured musical oeuvre. As a result, Banks' musical fingerprint can now be acknowledged as considerably more rich and diverse than has been previously recognised.