Australia Dancing - Rofe, Esther (1904

Rofe, Esther (1904 - 2000)

Rofe commenced piano lessons at age four, and later studied with Alberto Zelman junior, Fritz Hart and A.E. Floyd. A pianist and violinist, she began her career as an accompanist, and performing with small ensembles and the original Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In the early 1930s Rofe joined the Royal College of Music, London, and studied with Gordon Jacob, Ralph Vaughan Williams and R.O. Morris, among others.

At the outbreak of World War II Rofe began work at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), later joining the Colgate-Palmolive Radio Unit, Sydney where she worked for five-years. In the Unit she composed, arranged, conducted and organised the musicians' calls.

Rofe’s involvement with composing for ballet began with two works, which proved to be mainstays with the Borovansky Ballet, namely Sea Legend (1943) choreographed by Dorothy Stevenson, and Terra Australis (1946) choreographed by Edouard Borovansky. She was subsequently commissioned by Laurel Martyn to create two works for the Ballet Guild, L’Amour enchantee (1950) and Mathinna (1954) both choreographed by Martyn. Rofe expanded and orchestrated L’Amour enchantee in 1962, when Martyn reworked the piece for television, with the work being retitled The Lake.

In the 1960s, 70s and 80s Rofe continued to compose, however she was hampered by the lack of performance opportunities. In the 1993 Rofe was the Composer-of-Honour in the School of Music-Conservatorium at Monash University, and five years later was the, Australia Day Citizen of the Year for the City of Boroondara. In 1998 she became a represented composer at the Australian Music Centre (AMC), and in December 1999 the Esther Rofe Songbook (an AMC publication) was launched in Melbourne. Esther Rofe died in February 2000.

Bibliography:

Pauline Petrus, ‘Esther Rofe: theatre Musician’, Nicholas Brown (ed.), One hand on the manuscript (Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, ANU, 1995), pp. 75-94; Joel Crotty, ‘Revisiting Melbourne’s music heritage’, The View, 4 (1996), pp. 6-12.

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