Alkan in the afternoon: an unusual recital on Percy Grainger’s piano

erin-helyard-and-stephanie-mccallum-at-the-duo-art-pianoOn Sunday 28 August the galleries of the Grainger Museum rang with the sound of Charles-Valentin Alkan’s music played on Grainger’s Weber Duo-Art piano by Stephanie McCallum (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney) and Erin Helyard (Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne). The rich textures of rarely-heard four-hand piano repertory were enjoyed by an appreciative and numerous audience, augmented by the attentive faces of the portraits hanging in the front gallery as part of the exhibition Water, marks and countenances: Works on paper from the Grainger Museum collection.

grainger-audience-28-august-2016

Alkan’s 1850 arrangement of the Overture to Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète provided a dramatic introduction to the recital—and to Grainger’s piano—entertaining with a range of styles and techniques, from impressive contrapuntal passages to the melodramatic power of tremolo octave writing. It was a treat to hear this work in the way that so many families experienced opera in the nineteenth century: unable to access or afford theatre tickets, they enjoyed the music at home, performed at the piano.

during-the-concert

The central work of the afternoon was a 1906 transcription of Alkan’s Nine Preludes for pédalier op.66 (1866) by José Vianna de Motta, which traced a stimulating and moving journey and showcased McCallum and Helyard’s full range as performers from sensitive to exuberant, even athletic, pianism. For the revival of this extraordinary—and largely forgotten—music we are indebted to McCallum’s advocacy.

The encore was taken from Fauré’s Masques et Bergamasques suite of 1919, a composition that preceded the piano’s manufacture date by just over a decade, and it was a delight to hear this engaging repertoire performed on an instrument of its time, its distinctive tonal qualities enhancing the colours of Fauré’s beautiful writing.

Congratulations and thanks to Dr Jennifer Hill and the Grainger Museum for hosting this event, which was a tribute to the creative interaction of research and performance.

Dr Elizabeth Kertesz, Honorary Fellow, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music

The eminently capable Mr Brown: Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and his magnificent tree moving machine

Library catalogue entry: http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b1817839

The Rare Books Collection contains vestiges of many intriguing characters from the worlds of history, science and literature.  Amongst the colourful cast can be included the landscape gardener Lancelot Brown (1716-1783), whose 300th birthday is being celebrated this year.  Both lauded and lampooned in his lifetime, Brown transformed 18th century English garden design, had an intense aversion to red brick (‘it puts the whole valley in a fever’), and invented an exceptionally effective tree moving machine.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown

Born on the estate of Kirkhale Hall, Northumberland to a yeoman father and house maid, Brown is better known by his nickname of ‘Capability’, for assuring his aristocratic clients of the great potential, or ‘capability’, for realising improvements to their landed estates.  Brown remodelled the spaces surrounding English stately homes into verdant sweeping landscapes, of a kind that could be appreciated from the ease of one’s carriage, or from vantage points picturesquely positioned in one’s grounds.

By account Brown was a swift worker and could assess and produce a plan within an hour of riding about an estate and soon found his services sought by the most fashionable and wealthy gentry of the day.  This success was in part due to his ability to envision and design expansive gardens, but was underpinned by a particular capacity to translate theory into practice.

Library catalogue entry: http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b1817839

Trees and tree planting

One of Brown’s signature devices was the deft positioning of trees and copses and other arboreal plants to create ‘naturalistic’ effects in the landscape.  Trees, however, take years to grow and planting is rarely the interest of younger generations.  If Brown’s gardens were to mature in their owners’ lifetimes, then mature plantings were needed – his wealthy clientele simply couldn’t, or wouldn’t, wait the 30 or more years needed for an oak tree to attain a lofty height, or for a picturesque woodland feature to mature.  One shortcut to achieving this instantaneous sylvan idyll was the technique of repositioning semi-mature and advanced trees in a new setting, as if they had grown there from seed.

Methods for transplanting large trees had been devised before but it was an expensive and labour intensive activity, based on a tradition of moving the plants in an upright aspect, using a cumbersome combination of chains and pulleys.  Brown was the first to understand the practical advantage of moving trees in a horizontal position and designed a simple but effective machine for this purpose.  The machine, which served him well for the length of his career, was not only faster but enabled transplanting of advanced trees of between 15-36 feet relatively easily.

The Transplanting Machine

Writing 40 years after Brown’s death, Sir Henry Steuart, the author of The Planter’s guide…(1828) describes Brown’s ‘Transplanting Machine’ as it was used at Allanton House, Lanarkshire, Scotland:

‘It consists of a strong Pole and two Wheels, with a smaller wheel occasionally used, which is fixed at the extremity of the pole, and turns on a pivot.  The pole operates both as a powerful lever, to bring down the Trees to the horizontal position, and in conjunction with the wheels, as a still more powerful conveyance, to remove them to their new situation’.

Library catalogue entry: http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b1817839

The roles of the various labourers involved in the transplanting operation were critical: the Machiner (who positioned the apparatus to receive the tree), the Steersman (who walked at the rear of the machine and managed the top of the tree), the Balancemen (two or more workers who scrambled on top of the horizontal tree and acted as movable counterweights), and the whole party supported by assistants who held ropes and walked at the side of the transplanting apparatus to help steady the moving specimen.

Occasionally things did not go to plan, such as when a tree unexpectedly took on the properties of a giant catapult:

‘In proceeding with the Machine down a gentle slope of some length, at an accelerated pace, on which occasion both the Balancemen had gained the top with their usual agility, it so fell out, that the cords, which secured the rack-pins of the root, unfortunately gave way.  This happened so suddenly, that the root at once struck the ground, with a force equal to the united weight of the mass, and the momentum of the movement, and pitched the Balancemen (now suddenly lifted to an elevation of nearly thirty feet), like two shuttle-cocks, to many yards’ distance, over the heads of the horses and the driver, who stood in amazement at their sudden and aerial flight!  Luckily for the men, there was no frost upon the ground, so that, instead of breaking their bones, they fell only on the soft turf of the park; from which soon getting up and shaking themselves, they heartily joined in the laughter of their companions, at the extraordinary length of the leap which they had taken’.

Apparently, despite the collective mirth, it ‘proved impossible’ to coerce the Balancemen ‘to resume their elevated functions, for many months after’…

Susan Thomas, Rare Books Curator

Library catalogue entry: http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b1817839Bibliography and further reading from the Rare Books Collection

All quotes and images are taken from Henry Stueart’s The Planters guide…(1828)

Cradock, Joseph.  Village memoirs: in a series of letters between a clergyman and his family in the country, and his son in town.  Dublin : Printed for P. Wilson, Skinner-Row; and M. Mills, Capel-Street, 1775.

Goldsmith, Oliver.  The traveller, The deserted village, and other poems.  London : Printed for John Sharpe…by C. Whittingham, 1819.

Hinde, Thomas.  Capability Brown: the story of a master gardener.  London : Hutchinson, 1986.

Neale, John Preston.  Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland / from drawings by J. P. Neale.  London : Published for W.H. Reid, 1818-1823.

Steuart, Henry.  The Planter’s guide: or, a practical essay on the best method of giving immediate effect to wood by the removal of large trees and underwood… 2nd edition.  Edinburgh : John Murray, 1828.

Walpole, Henry.  The history of the modern taste in gardening. New York : Ursus Press, c1995.

The story of how ‘Corroboree’ by Indigenous artist Tommy McRae came to the University of Melbourne Archives

The story of how Tommy McRae’s Corroboree came to the university is told from documentation at University of Melbourne Archives (UMA), telling one side of a complex history. UMA looks forward to meeting with  McCrae’s descendants later in the year to show them more of his artwork and to learn more of the human story behind the documents.

Please note that images and names of deceased Indigenous people are contained within this article.

Corroboree, ink on paper by Tommy McRae, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00001
Corroboree or William Buckley and Dancers from the Wathaurong People, (c. 1890), ink on paper by Tommy McRae, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00001

The scene from Corroboree or William Buckley and Dancers from the Wathaurong People, (c. 1890) by Indigenous artist Tommy McRae is pressed into the exterior of the University of Melbourne’s new Arts West building. This striking design, created in a joint venture by Architectus & ARM Architecture, transforms an archival object into a monumental work of public art and inscribes a powerful indigenous perspective on Australian history into the building’s skin.

McRae’s ink drawing is featured on the façade along with other objects from the university’s 23 cultural collections, selected specifically by the architects to capture the cultural span of the University and the history of the Arts Faculty. Who was McRae and how did the university become the custodian of his beautiful artwork?

The modest 20.5 x 25.5cm ink drawing on paper is part of the Foord Family Collection at the University of Melbourne Archives and it sits in box alongside business records and family correspondence. The inclusion of Corroboree in the Foord papers demonstrates the close personal relationships that McRae formed to maintain his independence at a time of dispossession, segregation and suffering.

Detail of 'Squatters of the Old Times', copy of ink drawing by Tommy, undated, University of Melbourne Archives, John Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00052 This portrait photograph was affixed to McRae's ink drawing 'Squatters of the Old Times".
Detail of ‘Squatters of the Old Times’, copy of ink drawing by Tommy, undated, University of Melbourne Archives, John Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00052
This portrait photograph was affixed to McRae’s ink drawing ‘Squatters of the Old Times”.

Tommy McRae

Tommy McRae, also known as Tommy Barnes and by his Aboriginal names Yackaduna or Warra-euea, was born in the 1830s in the Murray Valley area, near Corowa, most likely belonging to the Kwatkwat people. He died in 1901.

As a child, McRae lived through cataclysmic change. He witnessed confrontations between his relatives, the traditional owners of the land, and settlers. By 1845, pastoralists had occupied Kwatkwat territory and introduced large herds of livestock. Gold miners dug up land around Ovens, destroying indigenous plants.

In 1920, settler historian Arthur Andrews said that no more than 200 Aboriginal people remained in the Murray Valley. McRae became a leader of the indigenous people who remained. He stayed on his country and he watched how settlers, miners and his relatives related to each other. Then he made records of what he saw – his drawings.

As with other Aboriginal artists of the nineteenth century, McRae drew images of indigenous customs, including hunting animals, fighting, and ceremonial events like corroborees. These depictions were vital; missions such as Coranderrk prohibited indigenous people from living according to their customs and so their portrayals in artwork was a way of remembering and keeping culture alive. McRae’s images put indigenous people in the centre of the picture as the observers rather than the observed. Before he developing his artistic talents, McRae worked as a stockman for local pastoralists in the Murray Valley. One of his employers was John Foord, a prominent businessman in the
Wahgunyah region.

McRae’s Foord Family connection

Born in Brighton, England in 1819, John Foord immigrated to Australia in the 1830s. First he went to Parramatta and then in 1839 he occupied land on the Victorian side of the Murray River. In 1856 Foord set up the township of Wahgunyah; North Wahgunyah (later Corowa) across the river was established by 1861. Foord built the flower mill and the school and set up a paddle-steamer service.

Research by UMA archivists suggests that the inclusion of two ink drawings by McRae in the Foord Family Collection, Corroboree and Squatters of the Old Times, is evidence of close ties between the artist and the Foord family. In 1864 Roderick Kilborn, a Canadian post master and Justice of the Peace living in Wahgunyah married John Foord’s daughter Sarah. Tommy McRae and his second wife Lily had three children together, sharing names with Sarah and Roderick’s children, Alexander, Henry and George. The McRae family also included other children from previous marriages and they along with Tommy’s brother’s family, lived mostly at Lake Moodemere during his most productive years as an artist.

Sarah Foord, undated, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00048. Sarah Foord was John Foord's daughter. She married Roderick Kilborn and had 8 children. Taken the day she opened the bridge over the Murray.
Sarah Foord, undated, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00048.
Sarah Foord was John Foord’s daughter. She married Roderick Kilborn and had 8 children. Taken the day she
opened the bridge over the Murray.

It is unclear exactly when McRae began to develop his skills as an artist, it appears he was encouraged by Roderick Kilborn who likely witnessed McRae practicing traditional sand drawings to relate stories and history to his people. McRae and Kilborn appear to have had a close relationship. In the 1870s, Kilborn gave McRae a notebook, pen and ink. McRae filled the notebook and Kilborn was soon acting as de facto art agent, sending drawings to Lord Hopetoun, then Governor of Victoria, and other European settlers and dignitaries.

McRae’s status as an artist increased and soon he was filling notebooks for European customers. He was paid to create records of his view of colonisation and his stories of dispossession and ongoing cultural vitality. Kilborn also purchased notebooks full of McRae’s drawings. Kilborn’s grandson indicated to Muriel McGivern, author of a history of the Wahgunyah region, that Kilborn gave many of these sketches away, until only two ink drawings remained in the family.

Acquiring the Foord Family Papers
In the 1960s University Archivist Frank Strachan was interested in the Foord collection because of its expression of township, business and pastoralist endeavours as the study of business and economic history by students and researchers was the trend in the 1960s. The Foord Family collection is relatively small. It contains 8 boxes of business records from the flour mill and river boat businesses and papers relating to local agricultural associations that John Foord was involved in. It seems significant then that McRae’s ink drawings are two of the few non-business items in the collection.

New stories in the Archives

In 2016 the collection offers new directions and focus. As more material relating to indigenous heritage is identified at UMA, it’s clear that these objects are not preserved as evidence solely of the past but also as living cultural memories with value in the present. Corroboree is a record of indigenous perspectives and also of friendship that could cross the cultural divide.

The presence of McRae’s artwork on campus is a reminder that the place of Aboriginal people as valued leaders is often not told but it is a vital story that needs to be heard. Much correspondence held in UMA illustrates the culture shock of European migrants to the landscape of the new colony; however, there is little first person perspective which tells of the Indigenous experience of similar shock.

This artwork connects many lives, past and present and by tracing objects through provenance new perspectives can be found and complex narratives reinterpreted.

Squatters of the old times, ink on paper by Tommy McRae c.1890, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00002
Squatters of the old times, ink on paper by Tommy McRae, c.1890, University of Melbourne Archives, Foord Family Collection, 1961.0008.00002

 

Bibliography

Andrews, Arthur, ‘The first settlement of the upper Murray 1835 to 1845 with a short account of over two hundred runs, 1835 to 1880.’ Sydney, 1920

Cooper, Carol and Urry, James, “Art, Aborigines and Chinese: a nineteenth century drawing by KwatKwat artist Tommy McRae. Aboriginal History vol 5, pt 1. 1981: 84

Cox, E.H. ‘An Aboriginal artist: inherited genius at Lake Tyers’, Argus, 8 June; Camera Supplement, 4

State Library of Victoria, ‘Artist William Barak’, Ergo, accessed 4 August 2016, http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/fight-rights/indigenous-rights/artist-william-barak

Sayers, Andrew, ‘McRae, Tommy (1835–1901)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcrae-tommy-13074/text23649, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 15 August 2016.

Jane Beattie
Assistant Archivist – University of Melbourne Archives

The 1886 school operetta, “Women at work”: a new acquisition for Rare Music

AAAWomen at work cover smallWomen at work, an 1886 operetta by Thomas Mee Pattison, with libretto by A.J. Foxwell, is a very rare and rather curious recent addition to the Rare Music collection. 1) It belongs to London publisher J. Curwen & Sons’ extensive series of “school operettas”, themselves evidence of the importance of vocal music in English schools at the time. The series includes short works intended for small children (Fairies of the Seasons, for example) through to extended works for senior students. Clearly one of the latter in its subject matter, Women at work is also one of the very longest, with an estimated duration of 2 ¼ hours.

Of its two creators, a little is known about T. Mee Pattison (1845–1936), who was born in Warrington, Cheshire and became an organist–choirmaster in his home town, aged 24. In the mid-1880s he moved to London where he composed and published a substantial amount of music, both sacred and secular: cantatas, operettas, anthems, and works for organ and piano. He was successful enough a composer by 1890 for extended extracts from his lecture, “How to write complete musical works” to appear in the Musical World. 2) The identity of his equally prolific and versatile librettist, A.J. Foxwell, is less clear.

It is, however, the subject matter that makes this particular operetta interesting. Women at work is set in the office of a Mrs Guardem who is about to set up an employment agency exclusively for women. Surrounded by women and girls she asks them to tell her all they know about their occupations that she may help place others.Lyric sheet opening

The requirement for only a single stage set—an office with “desk, table, large registers, &c.,”—and the general absence of stage action makes Women at work more a secular cantata than an operetta. There are only a few stage directions that require on-stage movement, notably: “Ladies all surround the Man with exclamations and gestures of disapproval”. Otherwise the work is more a concert in costume, for “each performer should wear the ordinary working dress of the trade or profession she represents” (p. [iii]).

An unusual aspect of Women at work is the contrast between the light and often amusing tone of the lyrics of the twenty-three musical numbers and the relentless didacticism of much of the spoken dialogue that separates them. As an example, the humorous Trio, no. 4, “I’m a clerk”—sung by post-office employees: a clerk, a “sorter” and a “counterwoman”—is followed by a speech from each woman about prerequisites, salary and conditions: a mail sorter, for example, “must be 4ft. 10in. in height, without boots … and know especially the geography of the United Kingdom” (p. 23).

The incorporation of swathes of information may have been common in these senior school cantatas; The sons of toil, published the following year and also created by Pattison and Foxwell, was observed by the Musical World’s critic to have “long-winded” dialogue. 3) Here the reviewer evokes the spirit of “Mr Barlow”—the “instructive monomaniac” created by Charles Dickens around 1860—but goes on to concede that the cantata’s impulse to instruct may be appropriate in a school context.

The librettist had contemporaneous published sources to mine for information; a debt to Mercy Grogan’s How women may earn a living (1880; rev 1883) and the Guide to Female Employment in Government Offices (1884) are two of the sources acknowledged. There is an emphasis in Grogan and in the cantata on “suitable” employment for “genteel” women—the first group of women to sing, for example, are telegraphists (see illustration from 1870)—rather than the hardship of the factory floor. 4) F8F7R8 GPO TELEGRAPH OFFICE, London in 1870. This is the Metropolitan Gallery covering the London area.. Image shot 1870. Exact date unknown.

In Women at Work, the factory is not mentioned until we hear the Trio, “We are workers in a pottery” (p. 52) followed by short speeches from “Cotton-factory girl” and “Straw worker”. The cantata dates from the beginning of a period when “white collar” employment opportunities for women—clerical and retail work, for example—increased and their employment in manufacturing declined. 5) The typewriter, in use from around 1882, generated what was essentially a new occupation and it was women who took up these stenographer positions in business offices.

The single male character, “Man”, who enters in a “serio-comic style” towards the end of the work (p. 57), is used to change the focus to issues such as the effect on men’s employment prospects of women occupying traditionally male roles; and why women shouldn’t (or couldn’t) simply stay out of the workforce. All is resolved by the cantata’s end, mostly through repeated assertions of the value of hard work for all. And what of the music? Stylistically the music of Women at work often resembles that of the comic operas of his contemporary Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), the composer from the “Gilbert and Sullivan” partnership.O yes we can afford to smile smaller crop

Looked at in the social and music-educational context of its time, Women at work is an interesting piece and one that would reward further study. And if a willing group of musicians could be assembled, sight reading it through could be both entertaining and instructive.

Jennifer Hill, Music curator

1) Two other copies only have been traced; both in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

2) Musical World, 18 October 1890: 829.

3) Musical World, 28 May 1887: 412.

4) Alison Kaye, The foundations of female entrepreneurship: Enterprise, home and household (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 13–14.

5) Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, work and family (New York: Routledge, 1978, rev. 1987), p. 156–57.

A gift of ten drawings by Allan Mitelman

Allan Mitelman (Polish/Australian bn. 1946) is a printmaker, draughtsman and painter who is also a major contributor to the history of abstraction in Australia. Ten works on paper by the artist have recently been gifted to the Baillieu Library Print Collection through the Cultural Gifts Program. This collection of ten drawings spans fourteen years of the artist’s career and is a window onto his life’s practice, one which has been concerned with reinventing the surface of paper.

The relationship between the artist, the paper and the layers of applied medium are vital in the production of these work of art and all of the gifted works are untitled, thereby inviting the viewer to respond to them free from constrains and conventions. Viewers may also be surprised by the small scale of these drawings which are no more than 20 centimetres in size.

1991.2036.000.000

Allan Mitelman, “S.T.”  1971, lithograph, image: 37.7 x 55.5cm, Baillieu Library Collection, the University of Melbourne. © Allan Mitelman

The way in which media lies on the paper is likewise key to the meaning and interpretation of the Baillieu Library Print Collection. Previously there had only been one example by Allan Mitelman in the collection: a lithograph titled “S.T.” . Therefore this gift contextualises this single abstract print and adds depth to the range of techniques in the collection. Untitled (2000), for example, incorporates a monotype print (a unique impression) the surface of which has been reworked with drawing. This is the first example of a monotype method in the collection.

2016057-Stone-SpecColl-49998

Allan Mitelman, Untitled (2000), monotype and ink, sheet: 14.6 x 9.6cm, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne. Gift of Matisse Mitelman. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2015. © Allan Mitelman

Other drawings such as Untitled (2012) combine watercolour and pencil and they are executed in such a manner that the viewer never tires of looking at them.

2016057-Stone-SpecColl-49998

Allan Mitelman, Untitled , 2012, pencil and watercolour, image: 15.5 x 9.1cm, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne. Gift of Matisse Mitelman. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2015. © Allan Mitelman

These works on paper offer wide appeal to students of subjects such as printmaking, art history, curatorship, history and education. They exemplify contemporary working practices, ensure that the collection is alive and  relevant, and they carve a new path into its future growth.

2016057-Stone-SpecColl-49998
Allan Mitelman, Untitled, 1990, pencil and watercolour, sheet: 16.5 x 13.7cm, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne. Gift of Matisse Mitelman. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2015. © Allan Mitelman

Reference

Allan Mitelman: works on paper 1967-2004 by Elizabeth Cross; with a contribution by Terence Maloon, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2004.

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