ANU professor slams 'Mickey Mouse' overhaul

Larry Sitsky. Photo: Keegan Carroll

By Steve Evans

One of the big figures in Australian music-making has slammed the proposed changes at the Australian National University as “Mickey Mouse”.

“I think this is a ‘feel good course’ which looks as though it’s been put together by amateurs,” says Larry Sitsky, after whom a room at the ANU School of Music is named.

“It might feel good to an administration. Professionally, it’s useless,” he said.

He is angry at what he sees as the end of the university’s stand-alone music college if and when it is merged into a new “School of Creative and Cultural Practice”. The ANU proposal said music education would concentrate on “Indigenous Music in a contemporary context, and music and Wellbeing”. There would also be an emphasis on the technology and production of contemporary music.

Professor Sitsky (as he remains at the ANU, with an office there) was in at the start of the school of music in 1966, first as the Canberra School of Music and then as the ANU School of music. He was the head of keyboard studies there, as well as of academic and composition studies. Music he has composed has been played by major orchestras and instrumentalists.

He said that music tuition had to be one to one if it was to produce first rate musicians.

Some lessons need to be two hours long, with the tutor and the student stopping and starting to fine tune the playing - and that couldn’t be done in a class.

“Anything less that one-to-one is simply Mickey Mouse,” he said.

Earlier in the week, the leadership of the ANU denied that its proposed changes amounted to a worsening of music at the university.

“We will continue to support performance and flagship ensembles like the ANU Orchestra and ANU Jazz Orchestra, and, with a more flexible curriculum, enable even more students to get involved,” Bronwyn Parry, dean of the ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), said.

The legacy of the school music, she said, “will continue and be embedded in a curriculum designed to meet the changing needs of our students after graduation”.

Professor Sitsky rejected that outright. “I’m 91 and I’ve taught music for a long time, so I’ve seen various often ridiculous attempts at what we’re discussing now. I’ve seen it all before.

“And I’m frankly appalled that we’re where we are just because there’s someone new at the helm and they feel they have to make changes.

“I understand of course, that the ANU is in financial trouble and they have to find money. All I’m saying is that when you apply the kind of thinking that’s being applied to a course purporting to produce musicians, you’ll fail.

“And you’ll fail your own graduates who will not thank you when they start applying to go elsewhere.”

Professor Sitsky said that if musicians from the new school at the ANU applied to other institutions like top music academics, they would be turned down because of the thin content of the ANU course.

Teaching the technology of music was not any use without teaching the music itself. He accepted that some music would still be taught but but felt that to produce musicians of a high standard demanded high-intensity courses. “I’m just talking about producing a professional musician, and for that, there’s no easy way of doing it.”

First published at The Canberra Times, July 12, 2025