Roger Covell at 85: A Tribute by his Colleagues and Students

Edited by Dorottya Fabian and Sonia Maddock

Roger Covell at 85:

A Tribute by his Colleagues and Students

Edited by Dorottya Fabian and Sonia Maddock © : School of the Arts and Media UNSW Australia, 2016

ISBN-10: 0-7334-3614-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-7334-3614-7 EAN: 9780733436147 Contents Program of the Day of Celebrations ...... 4

Dorottya Fabian: A Tribute to Roger Covell ...... 5

Roger Covell’s Awards and Major Publications ...... 10

Abstract of papers presented ...... 12 Roger Covell’s 85th Celebration and Symposium 5 March 2016, Robert Webster Building UNSW

Program

9.30 Welcome and Introduction (Professor Ian Jacobs, President and Vice-Chancellor) 9.45 John Peterson: Birthday Fanfare for Handbells (Handbell Ensemble) 10.00 Emery Schubert: Push bikes and chains: Cognitive mechanism against musical evolution 10.15 Peter Keller: When choral singing meets 10.30 Robert Forgács: Mozart’s irst opera seria Apollo et Hyacinthus and its context: the Mozart family’s association with Neo-Latin Drama 10.45 Virginia McGill: Verdi, Wagner and Five Themes: Love, The Hero, Death, Darkness, Festivity 11.00 Break (coffee/tea) 11.15 Christine Logan: Chopin’s heritage and the French Ballades for solo piano – 1 Day 11.30 Kerry Murphy: Henri Kowalski (1841-1916) in the Antipodes and his comic opera Queen Venus 11.45 Dorottya Fabian: A preliminary history of UNSW Opera 12.00 Musical Performances: Conal Coad, Simon Pauperis, Christine Logan (Mozart, Fauré) 12.30 Lunch 1.30 Musical Performance: Burgundian Consort, dir. Sonia Maddock (Byrd, Fauré, Mozart, Britten) 2.00 Gary McPherson: Emergence and nurturing of musical prodigiousness 2.15 John Napier: The company you keep: South Indian music and dance companies in contemporary Australia 2.30 Amanda Harris: Australian Aboriginal Encounter in the 1950s: ‘ethnic dance’ and ‘authentic songs’ 2.45 Jennifer Nevile: ‘I had to ight with the painters, master carpenters, actors, musicians and the dancers’: Performance problems and audience reaction in early modern spectacles 3.00 John Grifiths: Can Heteroclito Giancarli change the world? 3.15 Jane Hardie: ‘Let’s all Sing Alleluia’: the Sydney Alleluia Project 3.30 Break (coffee/tea) 4.00 Janice Stockigt: Jiří Tancibudek (1921–2004): an oboist extraordinaire 4.14 Michael Hooper: Elliott Gyger’s Fly Away Peter 4.30 Vincent Plush: The go-between: Roger Covell and the Creation of ‘The Great Australian Opera’ 4.45 Peter McCallum: Criticism, Covell, and the creation of the Australian composer 5.00 Robyn Holmes: The Covell papers in the National Library 5.15 Closing remarks and thanks 5.30 Musical Performance: Vocal Consort (Covell); Ian Munro (Fauré arr. By Grainger); John Napier, Vincent Plush (Grainger) 6-7.30 Drinks and celebration Dorttya Fabian: A Tribute to Roger Covell

Roger David Covell, AM, FAHA, Emeritus Professor, musicologist, critic, composer, and conductor is a living legend and national treasure. It would be hard to think of anybody else who has done so much and in the broadest scope for classical music in Sydney and nationally during the past sixty years or so. His achievements and honours are many and this tribute can only capture some of them. He was born in Sydney on 1 February 1931 but educated in Queensland because his father, Harold Covell died of war injuries when Roger was only one year old and his mother moved to Brisbane to be closer to her family. Not only did Roger lose his father to war but also his eldest brother, Jim, who died at the age Roger Covell as a boy of 20 ighting the Japanese as a pilot. His other brother, Geoffrey, also a pilot, survived the war but developed lung cancer due to heavy smoking between missions and died at age 41. Throughout his studies Roger supported his mother, Margaret Covell, as a budding journalist at the Courier Mail. Musically he was a child of the ABC, as he put it in an interview with in 2013. He listened to anything and everything the ABC broadcast, and had a special penchant for rhythmically complex pieces. Apparently he liked Purcell’s music so much that he would run the two miles from his primary school to be home by the time the broadcast came on. He enjoyed singing, learned to play the piano, and composed his irst pieces, including orchestral scores, in his early teens. After graduating with a BA from the University of Queensland, he went to Britain in 1950 where he worked as an actor with various theatre companies and also for the BBC and the Festival of Britain. While in London, he formed a close friendship with former school-mate, the poet Peter Porter. Upon his return to Australia he re-joined the Courier Mail in 1955 where he quickly established a reputation. This led, in 1960, to the offer by the Sydney Morning Heraldto become their chief Margaret with sons Geoffrey, Jim and Roger music critic. During his forty years tenure (until 2001) Roger Covell not only championed dozens of home-grown composers and performers but also educated and inluenced several generations in a myriad different ways; through concert and opera reviews, reports from overseas (mostly

Roger Covell (16) seated second from the left, in the Courier Mail as a participant in a World Youth Speaking Competition European) musical events, opinion pieces and commentaries on policies and events impacting the arts. He has been an eloquent and witty writer as well as an astute observer with an assured sense of quality and ability to spot talent. He never recoiled from going against the tide or saying the not-so-popular. And his ability to put his inger on the pulse and say it with clarity and succinctness have become legendary as evidenced by every one of his articles published in the Sydney Morning Herald. The next best thing that could have happened for classical music in Sydney was the invitation in 1966 by The University of for Roger to establish music on its Kensington campus. He joined the academic staff as a senior lecturer, becoming Associate Professor in 1973 and receiving the personal chair in 1983. During his reign the small music unit attached to the Vice-Chancellor’s ofice grew into irst a Department of Music within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and then a much enlarged School of Roger Covell (left) playing Music and Music Education, when in 1993 the Oatley College of Advanced viola da gamba Education amalgamated with UNSW, following the Dawkins reforms. He remained Head of School until his sudden and untimely retirement from teaching due to temporary ill health in 1996. Roger’s contribution to music at UNSW is equalled only by his contribution to UNSW’s reputation through music. His tireless entrepreneurship quickly created a vigorous musical life through weekly lunch-hour concerts, resident artists, and the establishing of various on-going musical ensembles. Being on his own (apart from a loyal secretary) until 1972, when Patricia Brown joined as a new staff member, Roger staged many highly successful documentary-concerts (or “dramatized lectures”, as one reviewer called them) where he spoke and directed musicians. He also single-handedly established UNSW Opera in 1968. This professional chamber opera company was active until 1997. It premiered many new Australian works (e.g. Barry Conyngham’s Edward John Eyre in 1973, commissioned by the company with inancial assistance from the Australia Council and UNSW, or the irst Australian performances of Peggy Glanville-Hick’s The Transposed Heads in 1970) and performed several other by various European composers, often for the irst time in Sydney, for instance Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 1968 or the irst live performance in Australia of Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea in 1969 for which Roger translated Busenello’s libretto into “easy-lowing” English. The opera also became the focus of his PhD, conferred in 1976. UNSW Opera was also the irst opera company to perform at the new Opera House. In July 1973 Roger Covell conducted a double bill of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Barry Conyngham’s Edward John Eyre, in the Concert Hall. The staging was produced by Aubrey Mellor with costumes by Dorothy Duncombe. Their success was such that EMI Australia decided to record their performance of Roger’s PhD graduation ceremony at UNSW Conyngham’s music-theatre piece in 1974 (EMI HMV OASD 7582). The recording was voted “best classical LP produced in Australia” by the commercial radio stations. Fresh off their success in the Opera House they took these productions on tour to Aberdeen and London as part of the Fifth International Festival of Youth Orchestras. They would repeat the feat in 1980 with another lucky group of twenty-six music students and singers travelling to Britain. Over the years Roger and his wife—colleague, soprano, musicologist and choral conductor Patricia Brown—put together some ifty productions (operas and “dramatized lectures”) to great acclaim, covering a huge and varied repertoire from Music for the Dukes of Burgundy and the medieval play of Robin and Marion to works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Britten as well as new and old pieces by Australian composers (e.g. Alison Bauld’s Exiles and In a dead brown land or the hugely successful show entitled Australia’s Yesterdays and many others as mentioned earlier). Invariably, the reviews were positive, repeatedly praising Roger’s “assured conducting and affectionate concern for singers and orchestra”; his “conspicuous sympathy, enthusiasm and instinct” for the music; his “lowing” singing translations of the original libretti; the excellent casting of singers; his tireless efforts to introduce unduly neglected and little known works to the public, and the “invaluable contribution” all this makes to music in Australia. His troupe of singers included soloists of the Elizabethan Theatre/Opera Company like soprano Marilyn Richardson (Christiansen) or tenor Robert Gard as well as young upcoming stars like counter-tenor Graham Roger’s with Professor Margaret Kartomi and her husband Pushee (who sang his irst Oberon in Britten’s A mid- Hidris, travelling in Indonesia summer night’s dream with UNSW Opera in 1973) and bass Conal Coad (who had just arrived from New Zealand and was engaged by Roger to sing Bottom in the same production). His creative team included Aubrey Mellor, Bernd Benthaak, Kim Carpenter and other luminaries of the world of theatre. During the early years of his tenure at UNSW, Roger Covell also established the Grainger Singers – a vocal consort of six singers led by internationally renowned English tenor, who was offered a residency (visiting fellowship) at UNSW in 1975-76. Later, with the assistance of his wife and colleague Patricia Brown, the Dowland Singers were formed, consisting of students and staff of the university and thus sowing the seeds for the Collegium Musicum Choir that is still active today under the direction of Sonia Maddock. In 1980 Roger also secured funding for a permanent professional instrumental group irst called the University of New South Wales Ensemble and later renamed as Australia Ensemble. He remained their Artistic Director until his full retirement in 2013. The University’s sponsorship has been unprecedented and generous over this period – inspiring the Brolga in November 1967 to liken “the University of N.S.W., for happenings of this kind … to some minor princely Court in the Europe of the 18th century.” However, it was Roger’s vision and negotiating skills that convinced successive Vice-Chancellors, Chancellors and University Councils to get behind these initiatives, and Roger’s musical and artistic leadership that secured their on-going success. Further support was A successful vegetable crop (Blackheath, 1978) forthcoming from the Australia Council for the Arts and the New South Wales State Government’s Cultural Grant Fund. Contemporary news reports are unequivocal about the signiicance of the performances directed by Roger in the musical and cultural life of Sydney in the late and throughout the . They frequently report sell-out nights, enthusiasm and appreciation for the “tour de force of organization and preparation” and for the innovative programming. When reviewing the “dramatized lectures” they repeatedly praise Roger’s “way of bringing life to unusual aspects of music” through “entertaining humour,” “wittily laconic and clear” as well as “informal yet sharply informative commentary.” As a university educator, Roger was similarly entertaining and astutely informative. The breadth and up-to-date- ness of his knowledge inspired generations of students. He was a modernist who loved technology and was always at the fore-front of its use creating multi-media lectures with slides, tapes, videos, overhead transparencies and chalk, going on excursions of the mind as he was reminded by one thing of something else, at times leaping over centuries and continents telling amusing and memorable anecdotes while illuminating the stylistic, historical and social signiicance of events and compositions. He peppered all this with hands- on demonstrations, singing and playing and encouraging students to join in. As department head and lecturer, he was quick to secure guest appearances by visiting artists and scholars, (e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1970) and was always dedicated to keeping people abreast of innovations and future opportunities. In May 1970, for instance, he organised for 600 NSW high school students to participate in a three-day At the Wagner Bayreuth Festival seminar about the effects of technology on communication. The lecturers included composer and actor- producer John Bell. Ever the interdisciplinary intellectual, Roger’s general education classes were legendary, with engineering students creating new instruments, architect and design students being involved in devising stage sets and experimenting with and creating music for the built environment. He was keenly interested in electronic music and as early as 1975 he collaborated with Antonio Karbowiak and Harvey Holmes from the School of Electric Engineering to develop a new electronic instrument, the Timbron, later to be developed into Fairlight, the irst Australian synthesizer. Typically, Roger immediately set out to create a notation system as well to enable authoring compositions for the Timbron that could be ingered, squeezed and danced on to produce sound. He was also keen to develop an electronic music studio for the music department and made sure music technology was part of the compulsory curriculum of every BA and BMus student in the newly introduced programs starting in 1989-1990. When the Music Department joined the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 1986, the irst program he devised was a Master of Music degree modelled on the one offered by the Graduate School of the City University of Roger Covell (Leichhardt, 1978) New York; another example of his innovative spirit, always looking out for international best practice to be implemented for the beneit of Australians. The program successfully educated dozens of music professionals starting out in the late 1980s-early . The highlight of Roger Covell’s scholarly contribution came in 1967 when Sun Book published his book, Australia’s Music: Themes of a New Society. It was not only the irst comprehensive account that also took a philosophical stand but deeply insightful and revolutionary. He was the irst to urge for a greater recognition of Percy Grainger’s compositions leading to considerable new scholarship on him in the ensuing decades. The monograph has also become a testimony of Roger’s sound judgment of the contemporary situation. The younger composers he chose for detailed discussion have since become the best-known of their generation and beyond: , Nigel Butterley, , Larry Sitzky and George Dreyfus. The book’s signiicance was instantly recognised and praised by all reviewers. As Kenneth Hince opined in The Australian (23 Dec 1967): “Covell’s judgments are sharp, intuitive, and based on a wide background of experience … a book which, for the irst time, deals with music in Australia in a fully adult and responsible way: as if we had grown up overnight.” If possible Felix Weder was even more complimentary as he Tandem bike-riding with Patricia Brown in Australia praised Roger’s “prophetic vision” (The Age 25 Nov 1967): “[A]s music critic … and Senior lecturer … he has his inger on the pulse of happenings. (…) [W]hat is a far more pertinent point … is that he was actually responsible for the change of climate which permitted this happening. In fact it was his appointment to the SMH which gave Australia its irst music critic of international standing, a position which he used with great integrity and devotion in the cause of a living art.” Donald Peart, Professor of Music and Chair of department at Sydney University wrote of a sense of “thankfulness, mingled with relief that a writer as gifted and painstaking as Covell should have been at work here, not merely recording in lively style what has been done but, as this book abundantly shows, constantly throwing out stimulating ideas for the future.” And so it goes for everybody who had the good-fortune of experiencing Roger as critic, as lecturer, as colleague, as mentor, as generous and entertaining host of countless dinners and lunches in his and his wife’s Patricia Brown’s beautiful homes in Blackheath and in Elizabeth Bay: A sense of gratefulness mingled with awe at his amazing breadth of knowledge; dry wittiness, ever so perceptive, succinct, and softly spoken; his clearly articulated vision for music, for Australia, for education; his ability to inspire and stimulate; and his unerring sense of quality both personal and artistic. Travelling in Munich with Krystyna Clarke, How lucky we were at UNSW to have had such a leader and former Coordinator educator for such a wonderfully long period of time! It is our great privilege and honour to present this tribute to Roger, the great mentor and sponsor of so many musicians and musicologists and one of the most important contributors to music in Australia during the second half of the twentieth century. Happy Birthday, dear Roger, and Many Happy Returns!

Dorottya •Awards Member of the Order of Australia (AM) 1986 • Geraldine Pascall Prize for Music Criticism 1993 • Centenary Awards 2003 • Long-term Contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music Award, Classical Music Awards 2006 • Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award 2013

Roger at Blackheath MonographPublications • Australia’s Music: Themes of a New Society (Sun Books, Melbourne, 1967)

Libretti • Morning-song for the Christ Child: for unaccompanied mixed chorus, with music by Peter Sculthorpe (Faber Music, c1966) • Sea chant: for unison voices and orchestra, with music by Peter Sculthorpe (Faber Music, c1968) • Autumn Song: for unaccompanied mixed chorus, with music by Peter Sculthorpe (Faber Music, c1972)

Edited • The Currency Lass, or, My Native Girl (a musical play in two acts) by Edward Geoghegan (Currency Press, c1976) • Folk songs of Australia and the men and women who sang them (vol. 2). With John Meredith, Hugh Anderson and Patricia Brown. Kensington: New South Wales University Press, 1987.

Reports • Music in Australia: needs and prospects: a report prepared on behalf of Unisearch Limited for the Australian Council for the Art. With Margaret J Sargent and Patricia Brown. Kensington, N.S.W.: Unisearch, 1970

• Music resources in Australian libraries: a report prepared for the Australian Advisory Council on Bibliographical Services. With Patricia Brown and Margaret J Sargent. Canberra: AACOBS, 1970

Articles • European musical nationalism in a colonial context. History of European Ideas, 16/4-6 (1993), 691-95. • : Rodrigue et Chimène: an opera in three acts. Musicology Australia, 27/1 (2004), 146- 15 • ’s plays. Quadrant, 8/1 (Jan/Feb 1964), 7-12 • The next jump of the musical Avant-Garde. Quadrant, 10/2 (Mar/Apr 1966), 32-38 • An end to modernity in music? Quadrant, 21/4 (Apr 1977), 22-25 • Patriotic songs: an Australian disease. Quadrant, 21/5 (May 1977), 16-20 • Recording’s irst 100 years: From Edison to Watergate. Quadrant,21/6 (June 1977), 28-30 • Winding back along the track. Quadrant, 21/8 (Aug 1977), 27-32 • Fame and neglect: Percy Grainger and Havergal Brian. Quadrant, 21/10 (Oct 1977), 30-33 • Wagner in Australia. Quadrant, 21/11 (Nov 1977), 53-56 • Strauss and Zweig: collaboration in troubled times. Quadrant, 22/12 (Dec 1978), 55-58 • Contemporary music in Australia. Quadrant, 23/10 (Oct 1979), 38-41 • Music and the new technology. Quadrant, 25/8 (Aug 1981), 3-9. • The new Bayreuth. Quadrant,28/1-2 (Jan/Feb 1984), 93-96 • The Aufführungpraxis of gesture. Quadrant, 33/12 (December 1989), 45-47. • Peter Sculthorpe: An introduction. Australian Journal of Music Education,3 (Oct 1968), 65-66 • Every teacher his own critic. Australian Journal of Music Education, 3 (Oct 1968), 9-1 • Music in Australian Libraries. With Patricia Brown. Australian Journal of Music Education, 10 (Apr 1972), 47-50 • Australian music education: A summary note. Australian Journal of Music Education, 15 (July 1974), 79-82 • The cage unbarred. Australian Journal of Music Education, 17 (Oct 1975), 3-7 • Percy Grainger – A personal view. Australian Journal of Music Education, 18 (Apr 1976), 17-1 • What is the musical heritage of Australian students? Australian Journal of Music Education, 21 (Oct 1977), 3-9, 11 • A statement from incoming president of ASME. Australian Journal of Music Education, 22 (April 1978), 90 • Music and History. Australian Journal of Music Education, 24 (April 1979), 27-35 • A statement of retiring national president of ASME. Australian Journal of Music Education, 28 (Apr 1981), 93-94 • Stop the rot. Australian Journal of Music Education, 2 (1984), 2-4

•Selected Member, Australia Other Council 1977-83 Achievements • Elected Fellow, Australian Academy of Humanities 1983 • Member of Council, Australian Academy of Humanities 1986-88 • President of Australian Society of Music Education 1978-81; Musicological Society of Australia 1983-84 • Board member: Heather Gell Dalcroze Foundation 1993-96 • Presenter of Australian Academy of Humanities Annual lecture 1996; Stuart Challender memorial Lecture 1994; • Named Fellow Australian Society Music Education 2011

From left to right: Christine Logan, Patricia Brown, Roger Covell, Emery Schubert, Roger receiving the Long-term Contribution to the Jill Stubington, Gary McPherson, Dorottya Fabian, members of the UNSW School Advancement of Australian Music Award at the of Music and Music Education at a PhD graduation ceremony (April 1999) 2006 Classical Music Awards with Kenneth Tribe Abstracts f Papers Emery Schubert, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, UNSW: Push bikes and chains: Cognitive mechanism against musical evolution

This paper presents a cognitive model that proposes recombination rather than evolution as the driver of musical change over historic time. The conclusion stems from the idea that the most expected event to happen in a piece of music is what actually happens for the particular piece of music under scrutiny—that is, the veridical expectation— regardless of the extent to which it satisies gestalt or schemata driven tendencies/likelihoods. If a ‘portion’ of incoming music is not familiar the ‘portion’ is segmented and matched with existing mental representations where possible. When no match can be found, the piece requires additional coding, e.g. through further exposure, to allow new mental representations to become established for that portion (segment). When segments are established in the mind they are then linked together to form a new veridical In Venice, undertaking research into Monteverdi representations of the new piece, but the connections with the earlier source-matches are also retained (shared). The linking of the different segments that lead to the representation of the new piece is referred to as veridical segment cross chaining, or ‘veridical chaining’ (VC). The VC hypothesis predicts that recombination does not develop in an evolutionary sense (music composed in a later historic time is ‘better’ than music composed earlier, as some meme theories suggest), but that recombination is a function of exposure, and therefore culture, but otherwise random. Chaining segments is analogous with riding bikes down the same path, but occasionally switching the route taken. The changing route may be determined by an external inluence (analogous to culture), but upon repeated trips down the path (exposure), the rider begins to enjoy that path, and it becomes habit. But it is not necessarily ‘better or worse’ than many other possible paths.

Conducting one of the UNSW Opera productions Peter Keller, Associate Professor, Western Sydney University: When choral singing meets opera

The trained voice, especially in male singers, exhibits an energy peak in a high frequency range (2500-3500 Hz) of its sound spectrum. This so-called “singer’s formant”, which adds brilliance and carrying power to the voice, is employed by opera singers to transcend powerful orchestras but typically eschewed in choral singing where the goal is to blend with others. However, we have observed an exception to this rule in an unlikely place. Acoustic analyses of the renowned St Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig revealed that, in the presence of adolescent female listeners, members of the bass section displayed especially pronounced singer’s formants. This effect may relect sexually mature males with the highest testosterone levels competing for female attention in a manner that does not otherwise undermine collaborative musical goals. Robert Forgács, PhD UNSW: Mozart’s irst opera seria Apollo et Hyacinthus and its context: the Mozart family’s association with Neo-Latin Drama

Mozart’s irst opera seria Apollo et Hyacinthus was composed in 1767 when the composer was eleven. It was written as an interlude, to be performed between the acts of a Neo-Latin drama staged at the University of Salzburg in May that year, Clementia Croesi by Ruinus Widl. This was the most important but by no means the only contribution of the Mozart family to the genre of Neo-Latin drama. This paper will examine the association of the Mozart family with this signiicant but neglected area of theatrical entertainment, Robert Forgács, Christine Logan, Roger Covell and beginning with Leopold Mozart as a student in Augsburg Catherine McCorkill at Roger’s Farewell Dinner in 2013 during the late 1720s and early 1730s. His younger brother Johann Christian also took part in one such production. After Leopold’s move to Salzburg he was commissioned to compose the no-longer extant music for the play Antiquitas personata by Paul Nagl in 1742. It also seems that Wolfgang made his stage début in this genre, when he appeared as a dancer in the drama Sigismundus Hungariae rex whose text was written by Father Marian Wimmer; his short opera seria Apollo et Hyacinthus dates from six years later. The continuing inluence of the genre on Mozart can be seen by the fact that when he composed his Italian-texted oratorio Betulia liberata in 1771, his inal chorus is modelled on a chorus composed by Michael Haydn for the Neo-Latin drama by Reichssiegel Pietas Christiana of 1770; in addition, the libretto of Mozart’s later opera seria Idomeneo of 1780-81 was strongly inluenced by the text of Father Marian Wimmer’s earlier Neo-Latin drama Idomeneus Cretensium Rex which had been premiered in Salzburg in April 1755. Finally, Mozart’s maternal grandfather, Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, also had an association with Neo-Latin drama, as he took part in several productions at Salzburg during his time there at both school and University.

Virginia McGill, PhD UNSW: Verdi, Wagner and Five Themes: Love, The Hero, Death, Darkness, Festivity

Verdi and Wagner never met and did not have much to say about each other. However, they did have a lot in common. Both had complicated marital lives, both were patriots, both were famous in their own lifetimes, both were men of the theatre. They were born in the same year, 1813, so it is not surprising that their operas have Romantic themes in common. More importantly, as Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera observes: They shared a love of language, and declamation, which, in their hands, becomes the true communicator of the deepest human feelings. They both created unpar alleled excitement in the theatre, and to that end used the orchestra to transmit gut-wrenching intensity.1 Much has been made of the differences between their philosophies and music. Whereas Wagner wrote his own, usually long, texts and takes us into metaphysical worlds, Verdi remains with his feet irmly on the ground and used various writers as librettists. Wagner’s larger-than-life characters, the only exception being the protagonists of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, contrast with Verdi’s whose realm is not the metaphysical and whose characters touch us deeply in their human plight or folly. A consideration of ive big, emotionally-laden and angst-riddled subjects, serves to reveal differences in philosophies and musical treatment but also interesting similarities. The subjects are: Love, the Hero, Death, Darkness and Festivity as played out in pairs of operas: La Traviata and Tristan und Isolde, Il Trovatore and Tannhäuser, Otello and Götterdämmerung, Macbeth and Tristan und Isolde (for a second time) and inally, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Murder and self-sacriice dominate but humour is given a place, albeit a small one.

1 Antonio Pappano: “Verdi or Wagner?” Telegraph, London. September 08, 2015 Christine Logan, Senior lecturer, UNSW: Fauré’s Ballade Op. 19 for solo piano - Context and performer’s perspective

A historical and stylistic context discussed by scholars including Jean-Michel Nectoux, James Parakilas and Jim Samson underlines the notable place of Fauré’s early masterpiece, the Ballade Op. 19 in the history of the genre. While analytical commentary has focussed on interpreting Fauré’s comments on structure and compositional process, on this occasion, I would like to play the piece, briely sketch the historical and stylistic context and touch briely on some discretionary, artistic choices that tend to be the most pressing concerns of the performer - matters such as tempi, pacing, and continuity; and lexibilities of tonal balance and dynamic range in order to both highlight the work’s innovative pianistic qualities and illustrate Joseph de Marliave’s remarks that this work, the irst example of “our impressionistic music,” represents a new era in French piano music. Roger in Fremantle

Kerry Murphy, FAHA and Professor of Music, Melbourne University: Algeria through French Eyes

This study examines the evolution of French colonial views of Algeria from the 1830 invasion to the mid century through the press reception of two comic vocal works of the 19th century, La cocarde tricolore: épisode de la guerre d’Alger: vaudeville en 3 actes (Hippolyte Cogniard, Théodore Cogniard premiered 1831) and Ambroise Thomas’s Le Caid (1849, libretto by Thomas-Marie-François Sauvage). A signiicant study on Renoir and Algeria by art historian Roger Benjamin shows how in Renoir’s substantial oeuvre set in Algeria there is no overt representation of the colonisers. For the two vocal works I have examined, the colonisers dominate and the indigenous population is a ictional reconstruction of stereotyped images of the harem, odalisses, and eunuchs, etc. Little attempt is made at exactitude and for most of the critics the fact that the opera is set in Algeria is insigniicant. Anti-Arab racial stereotypes are legion, however, and the French are presented as the igures of liberation. The exotic Algerian women see the French as offering a pathway to freedom. So in fact, in these works the desire of the exotic other for the French is stronger than the desire of the French for the exotic other. This relects one of the refrains of the West today, used in the justiication of their invasion of countries such as Afghanistan, that they are liberating and lifting the oppression of the local women, in particular.

Roger with members of the Australia Ensemble @UNSW at his Farewell Dinner in 2013 Dorottya Fabian, FAHA and Professor of Music, UNSW: A preliminary history of UNSW Opera

The professional chamber opera company, UNSW Opera was established by Roger Covell. Their irst performance was Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in August 1968 and their last show was Fauré’s Pénélope in October 1997. During the thirty years of its existence the company performed some ifty operas conducted by Roger Covell, often for the irst time in Australia or in Sydney. They also premiered new Australian works such as Barry Conyngham’s Edward John Eyre in 1973, of which they also made a recording for EMI in the following year. Among the highlights of the company’s history was their performance in the newly opened Sydney Opera House; the irst company to do so, although in the The 1973 UNSW Opera production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas Concert Hall rather than the Opera Theatre. Another was the irst production in the Sydney Opera House, highlight the paper will mention is the company’s performed in the Concert Hall tour to Aberdeen and London in 1973 and again in 1980. Over the years the company’s troupe of singers encompassed soloists of the Elizabethan Theatre/Opera Company like soprano Marilyn Richardson or tenor Robert Gard as well as young upcoming stars like counter-tenor Graham Pushee (who sang his irst Oberon in Britten’s A mid-summer night’s dream with UNSW Opera in 1973) and bass Conal Coad (who had just arrived from New Zealand and was engaged by Covell to sing Bottom in the same production). The creative team included Aubrey Mellor, Bernd Benthaak, Kim Carpenter and other luminaries of the world of theatre. Apart from recalling productions to illuminate the company’s signiicant contribution to Sydney’s musical calendar the presentation will draw on contemporary reviews and archival recordings to bring to life the golden era of music and opera at UNSW. UNSW Opera producer Aubrey Mellor (Aberdeen, 1973)

Gary McPherson, Ormond Chair and Director of Music, Melbourne University: Emergence and nurturing of musical prodigiousness

My presentation will address fundamental issues surrounding the nature/nurture debate in music and, in doing so, scrutinise much of the folklore that typically accompanies remarkable achievement in music. The main aim will be to describe the distinct and unique choreography of interactions that are unique for each child musician and to provide a hypothetical explanation of the facets that are believed to contribute most to the emergence and nurturing of musical prodigiousness. Roger as recipient of the Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award (2013) with Patricia Brown and Gary McPherson John Napier, Senior Lecturer, UNSW: The company you keep: South Indian music and dance companies in contemporary Australia

In order to show a complement, and to offer compliments, to the working of Roger Covell in his creation of the UNSW Opera, I have decided to briely examine the establishment of three dance companies in Australia by performers born in South Asia: Anandavalli (the Lingalayam Dance Company), Padma Menon (The Kailash Dance Company, subsequently the Padma Menon Dance Theatre) and Nirmal Jena (the Odissi Dance Company). I start by examining individual subjectivities. On migration to Australia, each dancer has had to confront the existential question of “What sort of dancer can I be now”? I then examine their innovative responses to the frameworks of tradition, community expectation and the quasi-narrative of multiculturalism in which they have operated. The current positions and activities of these artists – Anandavalli’s ongoing modernisation of bharatnatyam and commitment to keeping others dancing, Jena’s recourse to a spirituality less based in performance, and Menon’s promotion of a feminism grounded in the multiple subjectivities of her students and collaborators – cannot be explained with recourse to straightforward models of preservation and resistance, or of multicultural cosmopolitanism. Roger conducting the Collegium Music Choir and Orchestra (1979)

Amanda Harris, PhD UNSW, Research Associate, : Australian Aboriginal Encounter in the 1950s: ‘ethnic dance’ and ‘authentic songs’

American choreographer Beth Dean and her Australian baritone husband Victor Carell performed hundreds of “ethnic dance” and music concerts in the early 1950s throughout regional Australia, the US and Europe. In these concerts, Dean’s interpretations of the dances of Aboriginal Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and North America were programmed alongside songs based on “authentic” Aboriginal melodies and rhythms composed by Alfred and Mirrie Hill. Dean and Carell framed these concerts as opportunities for audiences to encounter Aboriginal culture in its authentic state. The educational intent of the performances was reinforced by touring circuits supported by Adult Education Boards across Australia, which aimed to give students access to a broad liberal education. Dean and Carell’s performances, and their use of the songs of Australian composers, were part of a larger turn towards Aboriginal culture by non-Indigenous composers following World War II. Composers sought a new musical style that might be considered uniquely Australian, and using Aboriginal melodies and rhythms to create this style, they participated in a wider practice of appropriating Indigenous arts. These appropriations occupied a paradoxical cultural space, on one hand attracting praise for bringing attention to the rich cultural heritage of Australia’s irst people, and on the other hand drawing criticism for taking cultural materials out of context and failing to acknowledge the real social and political disadvantage of the owners of those cultures. This paper will discuss some of these early interventions into popular thinking about Australian music and dance, as precursors to the better-known composers of the 1960s and 70s, and will consider cross-cultural creation in the broader context of the assimilation politics of the post-war period. Jennifer Nevile, PhD UNSW, Honorary Senior Lecturer: ‘I had to ight with the painters, master carpenters, actors, musicians and the dancers’: Performance problems and audience reaction in early modern spectacles

In early modern Europe theatrical spectacles performed in front of the monarch and court carried serious political messages regarding the relationship – both real and hoped for – between the monarch and the state. In contemporary account of these events, the costumes, the dancing, the scenery and stage machines, and the songs were often praised as the most beautiful or the most marvellous ever seen, as a successful performance greatly enhanced the reputation of a country on the international stage. Much more was at stake in these spectacles than an evening’s entertainment. Yet then, as now, such multi-media events encountered problems during production and performance, and it is this aspect which will be the focus of this paper, along with an examination of the response of the spectators to such disasters, and whether or not performance problems changed the dynamics between the performers and the spectators, especially in events in which the king, queen or members of the ruling family were involved, either directly as dancers, or indirectly as the audience member to whom the spectacle was addressed. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the desire in Italian, French and English courts for a successful outcome, and what efforts went into achieving this aim, before moving to an examination of what disasters did occur, from audience over-crowding and noise, stage-fright of the performers, properties being too big to it through the door into the hall in which the performance was taking place, to more serious catastrophes such as a ire during a performance. The second half of the paper examines audience reactions to such disasters, and the effects of these disasters on the dynamics between audience and performers.

John Grifiths, FAHA and Professor of Music, Monash University: Can Heteroclito Giancarli change the world?

Less familiar to contemporary musicologists than Benjamin Button, Heteroclito Giancarli might be poised to do more for music than Benjamin Button did for the science of ageing. A Venetian patrician, amateur singer and author of a collection of Compositione musicali published in 1602, Heteroclito Giancarli might be just the man to unsettle one of the pivotal foundation stones of Western musical culture concerning the genesis of opera. He is the tip of an iceberg that offers an alternate history to the modern myth starring Florentine nobleman Giovanni Bardi and his Camerata of monody co-conspirators, Girolamo Mei, Vincenzo Galilei and Jacopo Peri. Instead, the Giancarli story tells of a hundred years of singing to the lute, of a much more realistic and subtle development and reshaping of existing practices, and of Baroque styles that grew from renaissance traditions rather than as reaction against them. It therefore questions whether it was really the Bardi Laboratories that killed off polyphony in order to reinvent monody, and that acted to enable the Ancient World to triumph over Roger in Munich Modernity. My research suggests a less theatrical scenario that recognises the presence of singer-songwriters throughout the sixteenth century, musicians usually omitted from general histories of sixteenth-century music, and suggests a series of continuities that link Giulio Caccini and other early baroque monodists to the lutenist songsters who lourished throughout the sixteenth century. Jane Morlet Hardie, FAHA and Research Associate, University of Sydney ‘Let’s all Sing Alleluia’: the Sydney Alleluia Project

The University of Sydney’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library has, over the last ten years, been developing a collection of Spanish liturgical music manuscripts that date from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with an emphasis on the Long Sixteenth Century. Most of these manuscripts come without an established provenance, although internal evidence in some of them allows some educated guesses to be made. Scholars have long known that cycles of Alleluias can often provide information crucial to the placing of manuscripts when other information is lacking. Comparisons of the Alleluias in ive of the Sydney Spanish Liturgical Music Manuscripts whose origins are not known, with several manuscripts whose provenance is clear, allow us to make some provisional hypotheses about the Sydney material. This preliminary study looks at cycles of Alleluias from Sydney University, Fisher Library Rare Book Additional Manuscripts 349, 370, 373, 374 and 376, and compares them with Alleluias in Salamanca Cathedral Manuscripts 6, 9 and 11 with the aim of assessing possible relationships. While all of the Sydney manuscripts were likely produced in the Long Sixteenth Century, much of the material contained in them is much earlier, predating the edicts of the Council of Trent. Local and regional variations in texts and chant, as evidenced in the Alleluias, and conirmed in those concordant sources for which a provenance is known, allow us to provisionally place some of the Sydney manuscripts. Roger at the Bayreuth Opera House

Janice B. Stockigt, FAHA and Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne University: Jiří Tancibudek (1921–2004): an oboist extraordinaire

In 2000 a series of interviews with Jiří Tancibudek took place as part of the History of the University Unit of the . In addition to gleaning information about his early life and musical training in Czechoslovakia, many topics were covered giving insights into the life and musical experiences of this great artist in Australia following World War II. Not only was he a superb soloist who inspired Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra—a work Tancibudek premiered in Sydney in 1956—but he also became a highly respected and greatly-admired principal player with the ABC’s Victorian Symphony Orchestra (as the MSO then was known), and a founding member of the renowned Adelaide Wind Quintet. As a teacher, Tancibudek would inluence coming generations of Australian oboists. This contribution summarises some of Tancibudek’s wide-ranging reminiscences. Beginning with his own music education and his teachers (including Leon Goossens), they continue with an account of the escape with his wife Veřa from Czechoslovakia in 1950, the reason for coming to Sydney at the invitation of Eugene Goossens, concert tours in the 1950s with Veřa throughout NSW country towns, the many conductors under whose direction he played, composers who dedicated works to him (Franz Holford, Margaret Sutherland), music critics, and policies of both the NSW State and Federal Musician’s Unions which limited his professional activity during those post-war years. The exemplary playing and exquisite tone produced by this modest musician led to altered audience expectations of an instrument for which new standards of playing were established throughout Australia. Michael Hooper, Lecturer UNSW: Elliott Gyger’s ‘Fly Away Peter’

This paper explores Elliott Gyger’s opera Fly Away Peter. The composition engages directly with Australian nationalism, and with that nationalism in an international setting. Like ’s novel of the same name, and on which it is based, Gyger’s opera recounts Australia at war, and as such it blends the geographical with the transnational. The former is grounded in the birdsong that is found throughout the score, much of which is used to represent the immediate surrounds of Imogen, a character who remains embedded within a locality in Australia, photographing and documenting the area’s wildlife. The latter is the modernity that enables a consideration of nationalism. The timing of the composition, premièred in Sydney just after the ANZAC Day that marked the centenary of the Australian military’s landing at Gallipoli, inescapably raises questions about the current state of Australian nationalism. The musical score speaks of Gyger’s keen sense of the past. His music responds to a kind of modernism – exempliied in the music of Elliott Carter, and typical of the North American milieu in which much of Gyger’s music has been composed – which makes possible a inely shaded statement of contradictory musical ideas. The score supports the text at its most straightforward, and it also leaves open multiple possible readings. Alongside the explicit commentary on the libretto’s narrative, the opera remains equivocal about some signiicant ideas that Malouf’s text, too, addresses only implicitly. For example, the setting of the novel is one of the area of Australia that has undergone radical change since 1915, and the question of what remains of the place that was so signiicant to the characters who left to ‘ight for Australia’ is an absence that remains at opera’s end. My paper will explore some of the relationships between opera, libretto and novel, and it will consider some of the implications of the work for recent conceptions of Australian nationalism.

Vincent Plush, composer and PhD candidate, University of Adelaide: The go-between: Roger Covell and the Creation of ‘The Great Australian Opera’

On a hot Sunday afternoon in December 1963, Peter Sculthorpe and Roger Covell drove out to Castle Hill for lunch. Their host was Patrick White and it wasn’t long before writer and composer were plotting projects together. Covell became the intermediary, the go-between who negotiated the speed bumps in that testy relationship. He remained an important behind-the-scenes igure as Richard Meale and David Malouf wrote their White-derived opera Voss, which premiered at the in March 1986. This paper examines the pivotal role Covell had in the Barry Conyngham and David Malouf with Roger Covell at creation of what many hoped Roger’s Farewell Dinner at UNSW (December 2013) would be ‘the great Australian opera’. Peter McCallum, Associate Professor University of Sydney: Criticism, Covell, and the creation of the Australian composer

In the years leading up to, and following the 1963 conference of Australian Composers in Hobart, Australian music criticism discovered a narrative linking modernist optimism and Australian distinctiveness that had largely eluded it to that point. Led in Sydney by Roger Covell, the narrative shed egalitarianism to some extent, to nurture the emergence of a compositional elite who deined Australian composition, indeed the very concept of an Australian composer for a generation. This paper examines the shaping forces, tropes and assumptions of aspects of that narrative, its contribution to Australian musical development and its lessons for today. Roger Covell in evening dress at the Sydney Morning Herald ofice

Robyn Holmes, Australian National Library: Roger Covell’s personal papers in the National Library: Range of coverage, importance and preservation

The Symposium closes with a celebration of the acquisition of Roger Covell’s personal archive by the National Library of Australia. This is a gift of national signiicance and will form an enduring testimony to the inluence, impact and value of Roger’s contribution to Australian musical and cultural life from the 1960s to the present. The irst instalment contains signiicant correspondence, responses to reviews, theatre and choral music by or with Roger, research on Australian composers, ABC radio talks and other writing. More instalments will include scrapbooks that comprehensively document his musical criticism from 1960-2013 and his relationships with creative artists and performers, organisations, opera and infrastructure in Australia over decades. In turn, a large number of signiicant composer and literary archives held at the National Library, such as those of Peter Sculthorpe, Patrick White, Peter Porter, the Prerauers and the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, contain rich correspondence with Roger Covell: often from artists seeking his collaboration, opinions, acumen and wise counsel about musical works, careers, and strategies for negotiating their artistic milieu. Taken together, these collections convey Roger Covell’s professionalism, high standards, friendships and inluence over a lifetime of personal achievement.

Roger on the roof of St Stephen’s Cathedral in

from A Suite of poems for Roger Covell (2006) by Peter Porter

set to music composed by Ian Munro, entitled Melodies of Aternoon ‘he World Makes Music Everywhere’

Roger Covell at 85: