Robert H. McAnally

Australian band conductor and composer (1882-1959). Robert H. McAnally was undoubtedly the most prolific Australian composer/arranger of music for bands, particularly brass bands. His early musical career began with the Salvation Army, and he later became conductor of the New South Wales Tramways Band. He was one of the founders of the now defunct New South Wales Bandmasters’ Association based in Sydney. He wrote many difficult marches, including Implacable, Indomitable, The Spitfire, arranged Waltzing Matilda as a march and composed a programmatic march for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932 entitled Triumph of Industry. On a visit to London he was honoured to see the Massed Guards Band march down The Mall playing his march The Spitfire, which was inspired by the Spitfire pilots of the Second World War. When the ABC established its National Military Band in 1934 it was McAnally who auditioned the players from all over Australia and brought the band together for the arrival of Colonel H.E. Adkins – director of the famous Kneller Hall Military School of Music in England. McAnally spent most of his life in Sydney and died in Albury.