SYDNEY LIVING MUSEUMS PRESENTS SOUND HERITAGE SYDNEY Making music in historic places

28 MARCH 2017 ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

1 9.00am Registration

SOUND 9.30am Welcome Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon HERITAGE (Sydney Living Museums) SYDNEY 9.45am Keynote p4 Musical Soundscapes in the Historic Making music in House Museum historic places Professor Jeanice Brooks (University of Southampton) 28 MARCH 2017 ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE 10.30am Morning tea

10.50am Musical Sources and Contexts p5 Curating the Colonial Musical Museum Dr Graeme Skinner (Honorary Associate, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney)

Music from Home: Sydney Living p5 Museums’ sheet music collections and the Scots in Australia Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland (University of Glasgow)

11.50am Musical Contexts in Practice p6 The Dowling Songbook Project: Making music matter at Elizabeth Bay House Dr Matthew Stephens (Sydney Living Museums)

Listening to the Past – Performing p8 the Past: Restoring the voices of Lanyon Homestead, Mugga Mugga and Calthorpes’ House Dr Jennifer Gall (ANU School of Music)

Clockwise from top left: Mrs Macquarie’s cello. Photo © Jenni Carter for Sydney Living Museums; The morning room, Elizabeth Bay House. Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums; The light fixture in the saloon, Elizabeth Bay House. Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums; The principal bedroom, Elizabeth Bay House. Photo © Haley Richardson and Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums; Plate from Rudolph Ackermann’s The repository of arts, literature, fashions &c, August 1815. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums 9.00am Registration 12.50pm Lunch/introduction to Elizabeth Bay House & tour 9.30am Welcome Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon 1.50pm Words and Music – p8 (Sydney Living Museums) Elizabeth Bay House Saloon Silence and Listening: An introduction to 9.45am Keynote p4 the sounds and music collection of Rouse Musical Soundscapes in the Historic Hill estate, 1813–1980s House Museum Nicole Forsyth (Sydney Conservatorium Professor Jeanice Brooks of Music, University of Sydney) (University of Southampton) A concert celebrating music making in the 10.30am Morning tea historic home, with Katrina Faulds, Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Nyssa Milligan, James 10.50am Musical Sources and Contexts p5 Doig, Ian Blake and Sandra France Curating the Colonial Musical Museum Dr Graeme Skinner (Honorary Associate, 2.45pm Afternoon tea Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney) 3.00pm Historic Music and Dance p9 Rediscovering Dance and Dance Music Music from Home: Sydney Living p5 in Historic English Houses Museums’ sheet music collections and Dr Katrina Faulds the Scots in Australia (University of Southampton) Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland (University of Glasgow) Dancing in Fetters: p10 The culture of convict dance 11.50am Musical Contexts in Practice p6 Heather Clarke The Dowling Songbook Project: Making (Queensland University of Technology) music matter at Elizabeth Bay House Dr Matthew Stephens 4.00pm Building Soundscapes with History p11 (Sydney Living Museums) Pleasure Garden: Listening, through time Dr Genevieve Lacey (recorder virtuoso, Listening to the Past – Performing p8 serial collaborator and artistic director) the Past: Restoring the voices of Lanyon Homestead, Mugga Mugga and Calthorpes’ House 4.30– Closing panel discussion Dr Jennifer Gall (ANU School of Music) 5.00pm Chaired by Ian Innes (Sydney Living Museums)

3 MUSICAL SOUNDSCAPES IN THE HISTORIC HOUSE MUSEUM SOUND Professor Jeanice Brooks, University of Southampton Music is a powerful tool for shaping experiments at Tatton Park, emotion and environment, suggesting Cheshire, based on the house’s HERITAGE and inspiring action, and colouring historic music collections. Music was narrative. These uses, widely familiar an important daily activity for past from film, television and video games, residents, and evoking this activity SYDNEY are relatively common in cultural can help to people the properties in Abstracts & biographies heritage contexts. But outside the visitors’ imaginations, while at the musical museum sector (musical same time providing a powerful 28 MARCH 2017 instrument museums, popular music antidote to the static sense that ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE collections, composer residences) historical settings convey for some music has most often been used to audiences. Better knowledge of create atmosphere or mood, rather the role of music in country house than to evoke former residents’ use architecture, decoration and social of music in specific times and places. life, and of musical links to artefacts The music employed may have no and objects, can provide powerful provenance to the space, and it new interpretive tools and highlight usually functions as a background connections between tangible and element, almost never fully engaged intangible heritage. in interpretation. Music’s role in the BIOGRAPHY human, historical soundscape of the house remains inaudible and ignored. Jeanice Brooks is Professor of Music at the University of Southampton Recently, this situation has begun to (UK). She is co-founder of the change, partly through international Sound Heritage Network, funded partnerships and leadership by the Arts and Humanities from Sydney heritage institutions. Research Council of Great Britain, Professor Jeanice Brooks explores and director of the Austen Family these new developments by Music Books digitisation project. reviewing experiments in recovery She has worked extensively on the and interpretation of the musical musical history and interpretation past of English country houses. of National Trust houses, including Brooks describes the activities of Tatton Park, Killerton House (Devon) Sound Heritage, a research and and Mottisfont (Exeter), as well as interpretation network of academic independent and privately owned music historians, early music historic houses. Her scholarly research performance experts and heritage includes articles on music, collection professionals from the curatorial and and display in 18th- and 19th-century visitor experience domains, before domestic settings. focusing on a series of interpretation CURATING THE COLONIAL MUSIC FROM HOME: SYDNEY LIVING MUSEUMS’ MUSICAL MUSEUM SHEET MUSIC COLLECTIONS AND THE SCOTS IN AUSTRALIA Dr Graeme Skinner, Honorary Associate, Dr Brianna E Robertson-Kirkland, University of Glasgow Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland BIOGRAPHY University of Sydney discusses the late 18th- and early Brianna Robertson-Kirkland works as Why should we want to eavesdrop 19th-century tradition of collecting both a singer and a researcher and on our musical ancestors? And how and preserving Scottish songs in print. recently completed her PhD research can we reliably reimagine the lived These print editions, including music on the 18th-century castrato singer sonorous world of early Australian treatises intended to teach early 19th- Venanzio Rauzzini and his students, settler colonists, and of their British century music-making practices, were funded by a University of Glasgow homeland relatives? This brief designed for the use of domestic music College of Arts internship scholarship. overview reconsiders the types making by the rising middle class. Earlier this year she gave a talk about of physical and musical artefacts The Stewart Symonds sheet music her research at the sold-out event available to us, the kinds of historical collection, held by the Caroline TEDxGlasglow, a locally organised documentation and other records Simpson Library & Research event licensed by the famous TED that we can access, preconceptions Collection, Sydney Living Museums organisation. She has sung in and prejudices we should abandon, (SLM), contains some of the earliest masterclasses and private lessons with existing tools we can use or adapt, surviving examples of Scottish early music specialists, including Emma and the real and virtual resources music brought to Australia in the Kirkby, Nicholas Clapton and Robert we need to devise and develop to 19th century. This collection provides Toft, and regularly performs lecture- bring the colonial musical museum insight into the Scots musical tradition recitals at conferences and events. to new audiences. that existed in Australia and the type Her research interests span a wide BIOGRAPHY of music being disseminated in the variety of topics, and in September domestic setting through tuition and 2016 she organised an interdisciplinary Graeme Skinner is an Australian more general music making. workshop at the Glasgow Women’s musical historian, and an honorary Library that explored the topic of associate in musicology at Sydney Through an examination of SLM’s women and education in the 18th Conservatorium of Music, University music collections, Robertson-Kirkland century. Brianna received a grant from of Sydney. He is author of the tests previous scholarly assumptions the University of Glasgow’s Ross Fund biography Peter Sculthorpe: the that the Scots did not maintain their to undertake a one-month research making of an Australian composer national identity after emigrating, project examining the SLM sheet (UNSW Press; ebook 2015). In his while also considering Cliff Cumming’s music collections. She will continue to regularly updated research website findings in his 1993 paper ‘Scottish research the role of music education Australharmony (sydney.edu.au/ national identity in an Australian when she embarks on a research paradisec/australharmony) he colony’ (The Scottish historical review, project at Chawton House, Hampshire, documents the musical history vol 72, no 193, part 1 (April 1993), pp22– in April 2017, supported by the British of Australia’s colonial and early 38) that ‘the Scots in these foundation Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Federation eras, and curates a years deliberately sought to maintain Visiting Fellowship Award. complementary virtual archive of their identity, asserting their national Australian colonial music resources distinctiveness’. and user tags inside Trove. With co-author Michael Noone, he is also completing a catalogue of the plainsong and polyphonic choir books of Toledo Cathedral, Spain.

5 THE DOWLING SONGBOOK PROJECT: MAKING MUSIC MATTER AT ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE Dr Matthew Stephens, Sydney Living Museums For almost four decades, music instructions in singing, a treatise has played an important part in published in London of which no the interpretive and programmatic other surviving copy is known. communication of Sydney Living Coupled with handwritten Museums’ historic properties. ornamentation on some of the Music has appeared in individual songs, the Dowling songbook offers house recitals, larger music a rare opportunity to explore musical series, interpretive soundscapes taste and performance practice in and Indigenous programs or as 1830s Sydney. This paper describes entertainment at public programs the development of the Dowling and events. A tendency to rely on the Songbook Project and its potential German musical canon when making impact on future music performance music in our historic houses has in SLM’s historic properties. recently been challenged by a better BIOGRAPHY understanding of SLM’s own extensive sheet music collections. In a project Matthew Stephens is Research led by the Caroline Simpson Library & Librarian at the Caroline Simpson Research Collection (CSL&RC), sheet Library & Research Collection, Sydney music in a number of SLM’s historic Living Museums. He commenced houses and in the CSL&RC has been his tertiary studies at the music assessed and a small percentage department of the University of recatalogued and digitised. Sydney, followed by library studies and a doctorate in Australian library A better understanding of SLM’s music history. Matthew leads a project which collections, including the discovery involves evaluating, cataloguing and of a number of significant items, has digitising sheet music collections held prompted SLM to bring to life some of in SLM’s historic house museums and this repertoire within a 19th-century promoting their performance. In 2016, domestic context. Between July and SLM was awarded the National Trust October 2016, SLM collaborated Heritage Award for Research and with Professor Neal Peres Da Costa, Investigation for the Elizabeth Bay Historical Performance Unit, Sydney House ‘Lost’ Library Project, which Conservatorium of Music, and his had derived from Matthew’s doctoral students to perform in Elizabeth Bay research. Always keen to explore the House pieces from an extraordinary intangible heritage of SLM’s historic volume of sheet music bound in houses, Matthew looks forward Sydney in c1840. Belonging to a well- to sharing more of our fascinating known Sydney couple, the volume reading and music-making history. contained not just songs purchased in Sydney in the 1830s but also Grosse’s

Photo © Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums Elizabeth Bay House. Photo © Haley Richardson and Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums 7 LISTENING TO THE PAST – PERFORMING THE PAST: SILENCE AND LISTENING: AN RESTORING THE VOICES OF LANYON HOMESTEAD, INTRODUCTION TO THE SOUNDS MUGGA MUGGA AND CALTHORPES’ HOUSE AND MUSIC COLLECTION OF ROUSE Dr Jennifer Gall, Australian National University HILL ESTATE, 1813–1980s Nicole Forsyth, Sydney Conservatorium of Listening to the Past: Music in • Lanyon – Settling In: Music, University of Sydney historical places (2015) and the transportable music subsequent project Performing the Music and the people who made • Lanyon – Art in Isolation: Past (2016) represent a new concept of it sound are currently quiet on the classical keyboard music in the bush engagement with heritage properties. heritage site of Rouse Hill estate, Performing music from house museum • Lanyon – The Piano Speaks: managed by Sydney Living Museums. music collections on restored historical old sounds in new music It is, however, far from being a ‘silent’ instruments and incorporating history – from its Darug traditional • Mugga Mugga – Musical Ghosts: recorded sounds in audio guides owners to the six generations of the old and new sounds in old spaces. provide alternative ways to access Rouse–Terry family who inhabited house museum collections, opening BIOGRAPHY its built environment from 1813 to a unique window into past lives. In the 1980s, music has always been a Jennifer Gall is assistant curator of the words of Mark Smith (‘Futures of feature of the lives of the people who documents and artefacts at the hearing pasts’, Morat, 2014): lived here. National Film and Sound Archive of To their credit, museum curators Australia and an ANU Visiting Fellow. In this presentation, Nicole Forsyth and curators of historical homes She was awarded her doctorate, will explore place, music and sound, are, increasingly it seems, ‘Redefining the tradition: the role the collection, context and possible turning to historians of the senses of women in the evolution and interpretive ways of hearing Rouse Hill for advice about how best to transmission of Australian folk music’, estate once more. incorporate the senses onto their at the ANU School of Music in 2007. BIOGRAPHY spaces [and into their spaces]. She researches the relationship The most thoughtful curators are between music and popular culture, Nicole Forsyth is a violist, anxious to historicize the senses particularly the intersections of researcher, curator and educator so that visitors get a sense not traditional music and popular and with a 30-year freelance career only of the sounds of the late western art music in Australian encompassing historical performance, nineteenth century … but what they settler society, with a focus on the chamber music, new music/ meant to people at the time. … music of forgotten Australian women cross-platform work, community their reproduction can tell us not musicians. Jennifer is music critic for cultural development, teaching only about the nature of the past, The Canberra Times. She co-edited and orchestral performance. She but about our own intellectual Antipodean traditions: Australian has played for all the historically preferences and prejudices. folklore in the 21st century (2011) with informed performance groups in Professor Graham Seal and has Australia, including Orchestra of the Dr Jennifer Gall discusses how written several books for the National Antipodes – Pinchgut Opera. She Performing the Past builds on Library of Australia. co-founded the groundbreaking Listening to the Past to translate historical performance chamber group the musical heritage of historic Ironwood in 2006, and managed the houses into the present through group from 2011 to 2015, including four interconnected performances, extensive education program work, featuring new music commissioned national and overseas touring, and for historical instruments: developing programs for regional REDISCOVERING DANCE AND DANCE MUSIC IN HISTORIC ENGLISH HOUSES Dr Katrina Faulds, University of Southampton communities. Her current research, Dance was part of the fabric of BIOGRAPHY in collaboration with Sydney Living genteel social and cultural life in Katrina Faulds studied music at the Museums, bringing together music, late 18th- and early 19th-century University of Western Australia and performance practice, storytelling England. Both town and country Australian National University. She and history, looks at how we put houses played a significant role in subsequently completed postgraduate music back into heritage sites and hosting dance, ranging from intimate studies on fortepiano and clavichord at historic places, particularly Rouse family gatherings through to balls the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Hill estate 1813–1986, on Darug that catered for hundreds of guests. during which time she also performed country, north-western Sydney. In In doing so, dance was woven into in the Fringe concert series of the February, as artists-in-residence narratives of luxury, display, patronage Utrecht Oude Muziek Festival. She at the Bundanon Trust, Nicole, and class. The act of staging a ball completed a PhD, ‘“Invitation pour Damian Barbeler and John R Taylor had implications for how exterior la danse”: social dance, dance music will explore and develop sound and interior spaces were emphasised and feminine identity in the English installations that can be deployed and repurposed, and for how objects country house c.1770–1860’, at the to give an organic and hyper-real (including guests) were displayed. University of Southampton in 2015, immersive experience of museums While such occasions have largely under the supervision of Professor and historic sites and houses. been lost to time, dance music in Jeanice Brooks. During this time she domestic collections can help bridge was granted a scholarship to attend the gap. These scores offer an the Attingham Trust Summer School, insight into the pedagogical value an intensive residential course devoted of dance, the rich manner in which to the history of English country houses dance intersected with operatic and and their collections. Most recently, balletic culture, and the propagation she was administrator for the Sound of dance music in the provinces. As a Heritage network. material reminder of an ephemeral art form, domestic dance music can inspire both re-creation of the past and creation of contemporary works. Boughton House in Northamptonshire has creatively devised dance events that simultaneously reflect the large music collection in situ and encourage collaboration with leading artists. Notwithstanding logistical issues, historic properties have a real opportunity to engage with dance history and invest in a marginalised aspect of cultural heritage.

9 DANCING IN FETTERS: THE CULTURE OF CONVICT DANCE Heather Clarke, Queensland University of Technology The notion of convicts having a life which included music and dance is strikingly at variance with the prevailing image of convict heritage. However, dance was an integral part of everyday life among the lower orders and one of the most popular forms of recreation in the early colony. Convicts danced to escape the drudgery and harshness of their existence; dance provided social cohesion, a sense of belonging and a cultural identity in a strange new land. They were encouraged to dance for their good health on the long voyage to the colony, and some even danced to the music of their jangling chains. In the settlement, the authorities commented on their rowdy, disorderly dancing in the proliferation of public houses. Convicts referred to dance even in relation to punishment: the treadmill became known as the ‘dance academy’, and on the hangman’s noose, the condemned danced the ‘gallows jig’. Clarke’s research offers a range of unexpected perspectives on the cultural life of early Australian convicts.

Upper floor balcony, Elizabeth Bay House, Thomas Lawlor, c1935. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums PLEASURE GARDEN: LISTENING, THROUGH TIME Dr Genevieve Lacey BIOGRAPHY A year ago, Dr Genevieve Lacey BIOGRAPHY premiered Pleasure Garden in the Heather Clarke is a dance teacher Genevieve Lacey is a recorder grounds of Vaucluse House, Sydney. and historian who has been actively virtuoso, serial collaborator and It was the culmination of two years of involved in early Australian colonial artistic director. She has a career as work and of her relationship of more dance for over three decades. She an international soloist, a significant than 30 years with a 17th-century has been awarded six research recording catalogue and a growing musician, Jacob van Eyck. scholarships at national and body of large-scale collaborative international levels, frequently Pleasure Garden is a listening garden works to her name. Genevieve presents workshops, and regularly – a gently interactive instrument. It performs music spanning ten centuries publishes articles on her website responds to the movement of passers- with collaborators as diverse as colonialdance.com.au. Her research by: different layers of the composition the Australian Chamber Orchestra, includes dances associated with are triggered by their presence and Danish pipe and tabor player Poul the discovery of New Holland, move subtly across the garden as Høxbro, filmmaker Marc Silver, particularly in relation to William visitors explore it or sit awhile and listen. playwright-director Scott Rankin, Dampier and James Cook, and iconic Australian singer-songwriter The source material comprises van the elite dance culture of the early Paul Kelly, and Indigenous musicians Eyck’s own music, field recordings colony. She is currently undertaking the Black Arm Band. She has won two collected from the places in which the a doctorate to research the intriguing Australian Recording Industry Awards; work was made, and layered new works topic of convict dance. By combining a Helpmann Award; Australia Council, with improvisation at their core. The a comprehensive understanding of Freedman and Churchill fellowships; composition is sparse and delicate. Its the many dance traditions relevant and Outstanding Musician, Melbourne space allows the environment in which to early Australian history, she is Prize for Music. She holds degrees it is installed to become a vital part of able to bring a deep insight to this (including a doctorate) in music and the sound world. fascinating study. English literature from universities in Lacey’s presentation tells the story of Melbourne, Switzerland and Denmark. Pleasure Garden’s origins and making, Genevieve is the inaugural Artistic and features some snippets of the Director of FutureMakers, Musica Viva composition. Hovering somewhere Australia’s artist development program; behind the work is a quote from Jeanette Chair of the Australian Music Centre Winterson (Art objects: essays on ecstasy board; guest curator and artistic and effrontery, Random House, London, adviser to the cultural centre UKARIA; 1995, prelude) which has inspired much and a professional mentor for the of Lacey’s approach to life and her use Australian National Academy of Music’s of historical material in her work: fellowship program. If truth is that which lasts, then art has proved truer than any other human endeavour. What is certain is that pictures and poetry and music are not only marks in time but marks through time, of their own time and ours, not antique or historical, but living as they ever did, exuberantly, untired.

11 SOUND HERITAGE SYDNEY

CONVENER Sandy France Kerry Murphy Composer and performer Head of Musicology, Matthew Stephens Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Research Librarian, Caroline Simpson Jennifer Gall University of Melbourne Library & Research Collection, School of Music, Sydney Living Museums Australian National University Lisa Murray City Historian, City of Sydney Council [email protected] Leona Geeves Wagner Society in NSW Inc Joanna Nicholas NETWORK Portfolio Curator, House Museums Clare Gleeson Fiona Berry Portfolio, Sydney Living Museums Doctoral studies, Digitisation Projects Assistant, Victoria University of Wellington Emma Nixon Rare Books and Special Collections, Doctoral studies, Queensland University of Sydney Library Bronwen Griffin Conservatorium, University of Griffith Consultant musical instrument Ian Blake conservator Neal Peres Da Costa Composer and performer Historical Keyboards and Historical Scott Hill Jeanice Brooks Performance Division, Sydney Portfolio Curator, House Museums Co-Founder – Sound Heritage network, Conservatorium of Music, Portfolio, Sydney Living Museums Department of Music, University University of Sydney of Southampton Beth Hise Vincent Plush Head of Curatorial & Exhibitions, Caroline Butler-Bowdon Doctoral studies, Elder Conservatorium Sydney Living Museums Director, Strategy & Engagement, of Music, University of Adelaide Sydney Living Museums Ian Innes Anna Reid Director, Heritage & Collections, Ed Champion Dean, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney Living Museums Visitor Services Coordinator, University of Sydney House Museums Portfolio, Ian Jack Rosemary Richards Sydney Living Museums Senior Fellow and Archivist, St Andrews Doctoral studies, University of Melbourne College, University of Sydney Heather Clarke Brianna Robertson-Kirkland Doctoral studies, Queensland University Genevieve Lacey Visiting Fellow, University of Glasgow of Technology Performer and artistic director Josie Ryan Anna Cossu Michael Lea Performer and music educator Portfolio Curator, City Portfolio, Former Curator of Music, Sydney Living Museums Powerhouse Museum (1998–2014) Graeme Skinner Doctoral studies, Sydney Conservatorium Honorary Associate, James Doig of Music, University of Sydney Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Postgraduate performance studies, University of Sydney Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sophie Lieberman University of Sydney Head of Programs, Fiona Starr Sydney Living Museums Portfolio Curator, Macquarie Street Gillian Dooley Portfolio, Sydney Living Museums Publishing Support Librarian and English Alan Maddox and Creative Writing Liaison Librarian, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, Toner Stevenson Flinders University Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Head of House Museums Portfolio, University of Sydney Sydney Living Museums Katrina Faulds Performer and administrator, Megan Martin Colin van der Lecq Sound Heritage network, Head of Collections & Access, Consultant piano conservator and tuner University of Southampton Sydney Living Museums Daniel Yeadon Mel Flyte Nyssa Milligan Historical Performance Division, Assistant Curator, House Museums Postgraduate performance studies, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Portfolio, Sydney Living Museums Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney University of Sydney Nicole Forsyth Historical Performance Division, Helen Mitchell Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Conservatorium University of Sydney of Music, University of Sydney Front cover: Photo © Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums Sydney for Miller © Stuart Photo cover: Front