the music
“‘Like Stravinsky before her, Mary Finsterer has a remarkable capacity to adjust the basic characteristics of her music to very different circumstances, without any sense of compromise.’
Richard Toop”
"Over the past three decades Mary Finsterer has followed her own path. She's developed a distinctive musical voice - bold and forthright, with clearly etched forms and a controlled sense of drama. The control and clarity sits in dynamic tension with the headlong rhythmic momentum of much of her music. Finsterer attributes this quality to the influence of Irish folk dancing with its rhythmic feel of being 'ahead of the beat'.
These qualities are as true of her recent Renaissance-influenced music as they are of the more angular, modernist inspired works, full of with the arresting energy and textural invention, that made her name a quarter of a century ago..." READ ON
All About Australian Composer Mary Finsterer by Stephen Adams, ABC Classic FM
Early work
Double–disc of award–winning music
ABC Classics|Universal label
The music Mary composed from 1988 to 2008 was influenced by the innovations of 20th Century composers including Xenakis, Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Berio and her teachers Broadstock and Andriessen. Her award–winning orchestral music from this period can be heard on the double–disc compilation entitled CATCH, on the ABC Classics|Universal label. Available online.
Further information and samples of music here
Later work
Since 2000 Mary has been researching music from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Her interest in early Western classical music has increasingly influenced her work.
Further information and samples of music here