Henry Tate (poet)

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Henry Tate (October 27, 1873 - June 6, 1926) was an Australian poet and musician.

Henry Tate was born in Prahran, Melbourne, the son of Henry Tate, an accountant. He was educated at a local state school and as a choir boy at a St Kilda Anglican church, and learned music under Marshall Hall. He worked as a clerk before becoming a music teacher. Tate had fewer pupils than he might, however, for he would not encourage a child with no talent, and did not believe in coaching children for music examinations.

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[edit] Literary work

Tate contributed verse to The Bulletin and other journals, and wrote a weekly chess column for a Melbourne newspaper. In 1910 he published The Rune of the Bunyip and other Verse, and in 1917 a pamphlet, Australian Musical Resources, Some Suggestions, in which he demonstrated the possibility of the developing an Australian school of musical composers with a distinctive national character. He extended this argument in Australian Musical Possibilities, published in Melbourne in 1924. That year he became music critic for The Age.

[edit] Musical compositions

Tate's Bush Miniatures was played in Melbourne in 1925. The more ambitious Dawn, an Australian rhapsody for full orchestra with a melodic and rhythmic foundation based on Australian bird calls, was later performed by the university symphony orchestra under Bernard Heinze and was favourably received by both critics and the public.

[edit] Death

The value of Tate's work had scarcely begun to be appreciated when he died after a short illness on 6 June 1926. He was survived by his wife Violet Eleanor, née Mercer. They had no children. His poems were collected and published in 1928 with a portrait and an introduction by Elsie Cole.

[edit] References