PETER BUTLER

Peter Butler’s four years as a chorister (1965 to 1969) instilled many very vivid memories. Including being “scared witless” on his first Music Camp at the Armidale School in NSW, a “big, draughty, old-style private school, which hasn’t changed to this day”. The boys enjoyed Saturday night films, usually classics, “shown on old 16mm projectors”. However it was “Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, with real moving arms protruding from the haunted house walls holding candelabra, that scared us all witless”.

When Peter hung up his Choir beret in 1969, it was the end of one chapter in his association with the Australian Boys Choir, but there were many more to follow. Peter has the distinction of being the most widely engaged old boy in the Choir’s history, laying claim to roles as teacher, conductor, accompanist, founding TVC member, composer, soiree host, committee member, Registered Member and Board Member. Peter has also digitised the Choir’s entire archival collection of recordings, both audio and visual, and he still digitally records the audio at every concert.

Peter’s early experiences lay the foundation for his long and distinguished career in music education. He explains, “… the Choir training constituted a very considerable chunk of my total music training. It fine-tuned my ear to melodic and harmonic grammar, counterpoint, polyphony and a wide variety of period styles. I learnt a broad range of musicianship skills: performing, musicality, harmonising, musical form and architecture, ensemble unity and cohesiveness. It encouraged me to pursue music as a career, and to undertake further music study in Canberra. A significant part of my current practice continues to be children’s singing, and assisting adults to foster musically instructive singing practices in children."

“The Choir has turned out and been associated with so many Australian luminaries in the arts, music, sciences, education and medicine. While it cannot claim full responsibility for all of those successes, it is nonetheless indicative of its field of influence, and of the high regard with which it is held by a wide range of academies”.