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N O T E S
Newsletter of the Victorian Chapter of the Musicological Society of
Australia
Number
15
March 2000
CONTENTS
Note from the President
2000 Chapter Committee
Conference Reports
Members’ Publications
What’s On in 2000
As we are preparing for the XXIII national conference of the MSA in Sydney, which
boasts the largest contingent of Victorian presenters (sixteen) at a national conference
for many years, Melbourne is gearing up for a feast of musicological conferences scheduled
to take place in the next twelve months. Keynote addresses at these conferences will
encompass music education, popular muscic, reception studies, cultural history, historical
musicology and the sociology of music. Gone are the days of composer and canon, supplanted
by the trend to theorising informed by contigent disciplinary studies.
For the record, the upcoming events after the conference in Sydney are:
• “A Community of Researchers,” Australian Association for Research in
Music Education, 30 June–3 July
• “Music’s Audience: Reading and Listening to Music in Australia and
England, 1880–1930,” 12 August, with a
keynote address by Professor Stephen Banfield (University of
Birmingham). Abstract are due at the end of June 2000
• “Harmony in Our Heritage,” Victorian Schools’ Music Association
Conference, 28–30 July
(see below for further
details of all these conferences)
Planning is also under way for the XXIV national conference of the MSA at the University
of Melbourne, 18–22 April 2001.
At the risk of gluttony, there is of course, in addition to these, this year’s
Victorian Chapter Conference of the MSA, provisionally timetabled for November. Bon
appetit!
SUZANNE ROBINSON
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MSA VICTORIAN CHAPTER COMMITTEE FOR 2000
President: Sue Robinson <s.robinson@music.unimelb.edu.au>
Secretary: Suzanne Cole <s.cole@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au>
Treasurer: Michael Christoforidis <m.christoforidis@music.unimelb.edu.au>
Faculty of Music
University of Melbourne 3010
9344 8278
Chapter Conference Convenor: Joel Crotty <joel.crotty@arts.monash.edu.au>
Notes Editor: Patricia Shaw <p.shaw@patrick.acu.edu.au>
School of Arts & Sciences
Australian Catholic University
115 Victoria Pde
Fitzroy 3065
(Locked Bag 4115
Fitzroy Business Centre 3065)
9953 3211
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First National Ecumenical Hymn Conference, “Take up the Songs!”, Newman College, University of Melbourne, 23–26 September 1999
This ecumenical conference entirely devoted to hymnody attracted a large number of
participants from all over Australia and from England and New Zealand. An initiative of
the National Ecumenical Church Music Committee, the conference featured an impressive
line-up of guest presenters; these included text writer Brian Wren and composers Susan
Heafield and Richard Proulx (USA), text writer Shirley Erena Murray and writer/composer
Colin Gibson (New Zealand), and composer Francisco Feliciano (Philippines). Australian
presenters included composer Christopher Willcock., text writer Elizabeth Smith and song
writer Robin Mann.
The conference was an occasion to celebrate the recent publication of Together in Song,
which succeeds the Australian Hymnbook (1977) as a core collection of ecumenically based
hymns for use in Australian churches. Ample opportunity was provided to explore the
contents of the new hymnbook. Papers embraced a wide spectrum of topics dealing with
historical, theological and liturgical perspectives. Workshops, which covered areas such
as conducting, composition, text writing, accompaniment, improvisation and repertory,
allowed participants opportunities to upgrade practical skills.
Special highlights included two hymn festivals. Held at St Mary’s Star of the Sea
church, West Melbourne, the first was directed by Richard Proulx and comprised a
celebration of twentieth-century hymns. The second festival, held in Wesley Church and
directed by Francisco Feliciano, focussed on multicultural hymnody and featured Filippino,
Tongan, Polish and Russian Orthodox choirs from local churches, as well as the Australian
Catholic University Choir.
A pleasing aspect of the conference was the very lively interaction between participants
of different backgrounds of denomination, ethnicity and musical and literary persuasion.
It is hoped that, flowing from this very successful venture, will be the formation of an
Australian Hymn Society for the encouragement of hymn study, composition and publication.
DIANNE GOME, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
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American Musicological Society, 65th Annual Meeting, Kansas City, Missouri, 4–7 November 1999
Such is the size and scope of an AMS conference that an overview could only be written
by a committee of ten. It is with difficulty that I report upon a meeting at which one can
only engage in a fragmentary, disjointed, and unsystematic manner. I suspect that
experienced attendees of AMS meetings will know exactly how to organise their time and
energies in order to make the most of such conferences. But with up to five parallel
sessions during which an astonishing array of topics were presented, this participant was
constantly beset with difficult decisions. Besides, there were so many people to meet, so
many people to converse with. Informal conversations led to unexpected learning
experiences. (For example, from a Canadian horn-playing PhD candidate, whose topic
is concerned with the hunt in opera, I discovered fascinating aspects about techniques of
the natural horn in the first half of the eighteenth century.)
At a formal level, sessions such as “Opera and Politics,”
“Nineteenth-Century Topics,” “Theory and Business before 1700,” and
“The Britten-Auden Films of the 1930s” and so on, were available. Informative
papers were given by a range of speakers, including young doctoral students and
post-doctoral fellows. The flow of information during question times provided important
exchanges. For example, a paper given by Craig Wright (Yale University), titled “The
Authenticity of and Theology behind Bach’s Kleines harmonisches Labyrinth,”
argued for placement of this work (often attributed to Heinichen) firmly into the Bach
worklist. Christoff Wolff, who was in the audience, was able to inform the participants of
the session that the decisions has already been taken to re-instate the Kleines
harmonisches Labyrinth as an authentic work of Bach.
The ability to observe such interaction at close quarters, and to hear of recent decisions
(or findings prior to publication), make meetings of the American Musicological Society
memorable indeed.
JAN STOCKIGT, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
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33rd Royal Musical Association Research Students’ Conference, University of Huddersfield, 6–9 January 2000
Unlike last year, I was only able to attend one day of this year’s RMA research
students’ conference. However, it was in some ways a more worthwhile experience;
whereas last year’s conference was on weekdays only, this year’s ran from
Thursday lunchtime to Sunday evening, therefore many more senior staff from a variety of
universities were able to attend, considerably enhancing the discussion and general
atmosphere. The attendance at my Saturday morning session, for example, included Annagret
Fauser (City University) and Julian Rushton (Leeds), and the session was chaired by Julie
Brown (Royal Holloway), all of whom contributed substantially to the response to my paper
on French orchestration treatises, and one on Martinu’s reception in Paris from
another doctoral student, Richard Yarr (Queen’s University, Belfast).
I also attended a session on English composers Daniel Purcell and John Ernest, at which
the discussion was extremely erudite and detailed (amazing to me, who had never even heard
of Ernest). The afternoon panel discussion “ Musicology in Performance” was,
however, disappointing in that it revealed a level of division between performance and
scholarship which I had not thought existed in the UK. The overall range of papers on
offer thoughout the four days was extremely interesting, as usual at this conference, and
the level of enthusiasm for scholarship encouragingly high. This is definitely a
conference to be recommended to anyone visiting Europe in the northern winter, when
conference offerings are scanty.
TRISH SHAW, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY/UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
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Sweethearts of Rhythm
by Kay Dreyfus. Currency Press, 1998. rrp $35
A history of the all-girl dance bands and orchestras in Australia in the 1920s to 1940s,
taking in the their influence on popular music, and the role of women in professional
music-making in the face of discrimination. Copious photographs and other illustrations
are included.
Playing Ad Lib.: Improvisatory Music in Australia, 1836–1970
by John Whiteoak. Sydney: Currency Press, 1998. rrp $39.95
A cultural history of improvisatory music from colonial minstrel shows to circus bands to
experimental jazz and music theatre, based on the author’s PhD dissertation
“Australian Approaches to Improvisatory Musical Practice 1836–1970: A Melbourne
Perspective” (LaTrobe, 1993).
Australasian Music Research vol. 2–3
ed. Royston Gustavson, Suzanne Cole & Jennifer Hill. CSAM, 1999
Papers on a wide variety of topics in music of Australasia, by Dianne Gome, Wang
Zheng-Ting, Bruce Steele, Peter O’Byrne, Kathleen Nelson, Adrian Thomas, Tom Hall,
Roland Bannister, Jill Stubington, Gordon Spearritt and Adrienne Simpson.
Available from the Centre For Studies in Australian Music, Faculty of Music, University of
Melbourne, VIC 3010; ph: 9344 5356, fax: 9349 4473 or email
<ozcentre@music.unimelb.edu.au>
Context No 17 (Autumn 2000)
The latest issue of Context contains articles by Michael Christoforidis, Alan
Davison,and Beth Fogerty, plus reviews of recent publications including Kay Dreyfus’s
Sweethearts of Rhythm, and abstracts of recently passed Australian doctoral and
Master’s theses.
Contact <c.magazine@music.unimelb.edu.au>, phone (03) 9344 5256, or visit
http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/about/context01.html
Musics and Feminisms
ed. Sally Macarthur & Cate Poynton. Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999.
Selected papers from two conferences: “Word-Voice-Sound: Interactions around
Musics” (1996) and “Resonances” (1997). Authors include Terry Threadgold,
Thérčse Radic and Maree Macmillan. Available from the Australian Music Centre.
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AUSTRALIA
30 June–3 July “A Community of Researchers,”
Australian Association for Research in Music Education,
University of Melbourne.
28–30 July “Harmony in
Our Heritage: New Directions for Australian Music Education,”
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. Contact Kevin Kelley, Education Officer,
Victorian Schools’ Music Association, 217 Church St, Richmond, 3121; ph: 9428 2317,
or see http://www.netspace.net.au/~vsma
12 August “Music’s Audience:
Reading and Listening to Music in Australia and England, 1880–1930,”
School of Graduate Studies, University of Melbourne. Call for 20-minute papers due 30
June.
Contact Kerry Murphy, (03) 9344 7381, or <k.murphy@music.unimelb.edu.au>.
mid-Nov. “Music Publishing and
Bookselling in Australia from 1788,” Monash University, Clayton.
Call for proposals for presentations closes 31 July. Contact Georgina Binns, Music and
Multi-Media Librarian, Monash University, Clayton, 3168;
ph: 9905 3236, fax: 9905 9142,<georgina.binns@lib.monash.ed.au>
OVERSEAS
23–27 Mar. Béla Bartók
International Congress, University of Texas at Austin. Speakers include Malcolm Gillies,
Elliott Antokoletz, Judit Frigyesi, László Somfai, Benjamin Suchoff. For information,
see http://www.utexas.edu/cofa/music/bartok2000/index.html
31 Mar.–1 Apr. “Berlioz: Past, Present and Future,” Smith
College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
See http://www.berlioz2003.com or contact Professor Peter Bloom
<pbloom@sophia.smith.edu>
29 June–2 July Conference on 19th-Century Music, Royal
Holloway, Uni. of London. Contact David Charlton,
Dept of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK;
fax +44-1784-439 441 or <d.charlton@rhbnc.ac.uk>
see http://www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/Conferences/00-6-ncm.html
12–16 July 9th Biennial
Conference on Baroque Music, Trinity College Dublin.
Contact Martin Adams, School of Music, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland,
<madams@tcd.ie> or see http://www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/Conferences/index.html
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