Richard Meale
Australian composer, pianist and radio programmer Richard Meale was born in Sydney on 24 August 1932. He was taught piano, clarinet, harp, music history and music theory.
His reputation as a pianist grew with each performance he gave of new works by Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen and other post-war European composers.
He was mostly self-taught as a composer, and wrote music from his teens onwards, but his Sonata for flute and piano was the first to survive his own extreme criticism. His music was generally atonal.
He also worked as a buyer for record shops and as a concert and radio programmer for ABC - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Richard Meale died in Sydney on 23 November 2009, aged seventy-seven.