Margaret Sutherland’s father was George Sutherland, a journalist and writer and member of a prominent Scottish-Australian family. The painter Jane Sutherland was her aunt and the physicist and mathematician William Sutherland was her uncle. Her sister, Ruth Sutherland was a painter and writer.

Her first piano teacher was another aunt, Julia Sutherland (1861-1930), a pupil of Louis Pabst, a German émigré then considered to be Melbourne’s leading piano teacher (himself a pupil of Anton Rubinstein, and Percy Grainger‘s first teacher).^[1] A student of Edward Goll in Australia and of Sir Arnold Bax in London during the 1920s, Sutherland wrote pieces in almost all forms, but particularly concentrated on the genre of chamber music. Her major works include a symphony,^[2] The Four Temperaments (orchestrated by Robert W. Hughes in 1964), concertos for various instruments (including violin), a symphonic poem entitled Haunted Hills (1953), and the chamber opera The Young Kabbarli (1964; libretto by Maie Casey). A severe stroke in 1969 ended her composing career.

Despite the emphasis on non-vocal works in her total output, one of Sutherland’s most recognised pieces is “In the Dim Counties” (1936) for voice and piano accompaniment from Five Songs. Sutherland sets her music to the poetry of Shaw Neilson, considered a “pastoral lyric poet” from Australia whose verse has “simplicity of form and restraint of utterance”. Sutherland captures this through sharp rhythms, light instrumentation and “even musical balance”. Five Songs has been recorded by numerous Australian female artists such as Helen Noonan. A recording of her Trio in C major (1935), from a manuscript only recently rediscovered at the University of Melbounre, was issued in 2026.