Hearing the Music
of Early New South Wales
Exploring Home with an Australian Voice
Asked today to name the oldest Australian songs, people might pick ‘Botany Bay’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ or ‘Click go the shears’. Yet the words of all of these songs were written after 1885, and none of the tunes was composed in Australia. As early as the 1820s, however, colonists had begun seeking ways to celebrate their new home through music, and many locally written tunes were popular, although they are unknown to most of us today.
Music publications produced in Sydney showcased local composers as a demonstration of Australian culture. Colonists also tried to establish their identity in this new place by naming music after Aboriginal placenames. From the 1840s, composers such as Isaac Nathan went a step further and appropriated Aboriginal tunes as a way of expressing a local musical identity.
Meanwhile, in rural areas and on the goldfields, a tradition of folk music developed, largely among musical amateurs, adapting well-known tunes from the old countries to local subjects – escaped convicts and bushrangers, diggers, stockmen and shearers.
GRAPHIC (BACKGROUND)
Hand coloured photograph showing wool leaving Box Hill, NSW, c1910
ROUSE HILL ESTATE, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Music at the Heart of Country
When the moon rose … shortly after the dance commenced … the women and young girls formed a sort of an orchestra, beating opossum rugs and singing …
GERARD KREFFT, ‘ON THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ABORIGINES OF THE LOWER MURRAY AND DARLING’, TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, 1862–65
By 1860, Aboriginal people in coastal NSW had suffered seven decades of physical and cultural dislocation from their land. Further inland, pastoralism was taking a huge toll on the First Peoples’ connection with country and way of life. European observers tended to view these changes with fatalism: naturalist Gerard Krefft (1830–1881) probably saw his painting of a corroboree on the banks of the Murray River in 1857 as a necessary memorial to a hopelessly endangered culture. In a similar vein, a small number of songs from remote regions of NSW were preserved by settlers, who wrote down snippets of words and tunes, however imperfectly. Fortunately, colonists underestimated the resilience of Aboriginal musical culture and its ability to evolve and endure.
AN EXPEDITION TO THE MURRAY
In 1857, natural historians Gerard Krefft and William Blandowski spent seven months on an expedition along the Murray River collecting specimens for the Victorian Museum. During this time, Krefft was invited by Jacob, a senior Aboriginal man, to view a corroboree of the Nyeri Nyeri people on the northern banks of the Murray, in NSW. Krefft’s illustrations and descriptions of the corroboree offer a rare glimpse of a European encounter with ceremony, music and dance almost 70 years after colonisation began.
BACKGROUND
[Corroboree on the Murray River]
Gerard Krefft, 1858
DIXSON GALLERIES, STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Contemporary First Peoples Composers
Elizabeth Sheppard
Our country cradles and sings to us. We hear her music as we gather around Karlinkiri, the heart of home, so we give voice to it.
ELIZABETH SHEPPARD
Of Noongar Yamatji heritage, Elizabeth Sheppard was raised in a musical family. She learnt piano and singing at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music, performed at school, community and church, and sang professionally with the Tasmanian Opera Company, and as a cathedral cantor. At Eora and Tranby colleges in Sydney, while reconnecting with her Noongar Yamatji heritage, she found her unique compositional voice. Her new work, ‘Karlinkiri Hearth’, takes listeners on a journey beyond colonial conflict, to truth telling and a hopeful vision of the future.
LEARN MORE
Contemporary First Peoples Composers, Museums of History NSW
AUDIO, COMMISSIONED EXCLUSIVELY FOR SONGS OF HOME
‘Karlinkiri Hearth’
Composed by Elizabeth Sheppard
Performed by Elizabeth Sheppard (clapsticks) and members of the Royal Australian Navy Band, 2019
RECORDED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ABC CLASSIC
GRAPHIC (LEFT)
PHOTO © ANDREW JAMES / JAMES HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY PTY LTD FOR MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
An Australian Folk Music
Fred Holland was 88 years old when recorded in 1957 [and he] taught most of the old Mudgee musicians to play those lovely local tunes which have become known as the ‘Mudgee Waltz’ and the ‘Mudgee Schottische’.
JOHN MEREDITH, REAL FOLK, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA, 1995
Folk music has been handed down from generation to generation largely in oral form. Though early settlers brought oral music traditions with them from the old countries, few of these songs and practices have survived. Over time, however, new songs evolved, reflecting the lives of convicts, settlers and rural workers.
Most of the 19th-century Australian folk songs known today were recovered and repopularised in the decades following 1950, during a revival of interest in folk music internationally. Dedicated collectors recorded older Australians performing music they had learnt over a lifetime, and scoured libraries for print and manuscript copies of colonial music. This important movement continues, with many Australian folk singers and instrumentalists exploring a national identity through music.
GRAPHIC (ABOVE)
‘Ring the bell, watchman’ by Henry Clay Work
Published by W H Glen, Melbourne, c1891–1900
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
'Click go the Shears'
The American song ‘Ring the bell, watchman’, by Henry Clay Work, was introduced to Australia in the late 1860s and quickly became popular with young Australians. The catchy tune also became a vehicle for new local lyrics, the most famous of which are those of ‘Click go the shears’. Popularised in the 1950s in school music anthologies and by folk singer Burl Ives, the song became almost universally known by Australians, most of whom had no inkling of the tune’s American origins.
AUDIO
'Ring the bell, watchman'
Composed by Henry Clay Work
Performed by Mrs Gibbons, c1953–61
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA: ORAL TRC 4/5A
A Portable Tradition
Folk music is, by its nature, flexible and portable. It has flourished without sheet music, and in places where large instruments such as pianos are unavailable. Musicians could strike up a tune on a farm or in a workshop, on the goldfields or in a pub. One popular folk instrument was the English concertina; the example on display, dating from the 1850s, belonged to the German‑born winemaker Sebastian Schubach of Albury in southern NSW. Another common folk instrument was the fiddle. This curiously shaped violin (right), made out of a tucker box by a stockman in regional Victoria in 1860, is proof of the resourcefulness of musicians living in the bush.
OBJECT (RIGHT)
Violin and bow
Maker unknown, 1860
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA,
REX NAN KIVELL COLLECTION NK6434
Colonial Composers
It is sufficient for us to remind our readers, that those delicious morceaux the ‘Hebrew Melodies,’ written by Lord Byron, were set to music by Mr. Nathan.
THE SYDNEY HERALD, 22 FEBRUARY 1841
Only a few pieces of music composed by colonists survive from before 1840. These include ‘Currency lasses’, written in Sydney in 1825 and later printed in London. In 1841, the prominent English composer Isaac Nathan emigrated to NSW, followed by fellow composer Stephen Hale Marsh in 1842. Both men were gifted musicians who quickly produced music popular with Australian audiences. Around the same time, a talented young Sydney local, Frederick Ellard (c1824–1874), son of music seller Francis Ellard, composed several promising pieces of music.
By the 1850s, a flourishing colonial music publishing industry was supplying a steady stream of new songs and dance music by recent arrivals like Frenchman Edward Desiree Boulanger and the English Spagnolettis (father and son), and settlers of longer standing such as Charles Packer, George Strong and William Stanley.
VIDEO
'Australian flowers: impromptu for the piano forte'
Composed by Miska Hauser
Performed by James Doig (piano), 2015
RECORDED BY SYDNEY LIVING MUSEUMS
Immigrants 'making' Australian Music
This is the earliest surviving Australian music manuscript. Only three months after arriving from Mauritius in 1833, Englishman William Joseph Cavendish (1789–1839) borrowed Aboriginal placenames – Kurrajong and Woolloomooloo – for the titles of this set of quadrilles. A decade later, Isaac Nathan attempted to compose a genuinely Australian melody by making an arrangement of the Aboriginal song ‘Koorinda braia’, with words from the Ngarigu language in the Monaro region of southern NSW. Nathan’s version must have sounded quite different from the original, but its simplicity and upbeat brightness still seem to capture a spirit of country beyond the borders of settlement.
OBJECT (RIGHT)
‘Kurry Jong’ (Kurrajong) and ‘Woo-loo-moo-loo’
quadrilles by William Joseph Cavendish
Enclosed in letter from the composer, Sydney, dated 20 April 1833
MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
VIDEO
Fairy Quadrilles and Waltzes by William Joseph Cavendish
Performed by Annie Gard (violin), Daniel Yeadon (vioaloncello), and Neal Peres Da Costa (piano)
RECORDED BY THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AT ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Although Charles Sandys Packer (1809–1883) came to the colonies as a convict, his musical talents were recognised wherever he went. Born in Berkshire, England, the son of a church organist, he was one of the inaugural students at London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1824. Packer was convicted of fraud in 1839, and sentenced to transportation for life. He became musical tutor to the commandant’s children on the remote secondary settlement of Norfolk Island, and later a professor of music in Tasmania. Packer received his ticket of leave in 1847, and after moving to NSW in the early 1850s, he prospered as one of Sydney’s leading music professionals, as a choral conductor, pianist, organist, teacher and composer.
BACKGROUND
‘City of Sydney polka’ by Charles Packer
Published by Woolcott & Clarke, Sydney, c1854
STEWART SYMONDS SHEET MUSIC COLLECTION, CAROLINE SIMPSON LIBRARY & RESEARCH COLLECTION, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
AUDIO
‘City of Sydney polka’
Composed by Charles Packer
Performed by James Doig (piano), 2015
RECORDED BY MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Isaac Nathan, Lord Byron & The Hebrew Melodies
Isaac Nathan (1790–1864) was one of Australia’s most widely published colonial composers, and his music was found in many NSW homes. Long before arriving here, he was well known for his collaboration with poet Byron (1788–1824) on the Hebrew melodies (1815–16), which included the widely popular song ‘Jephtha’s daughter’. After Byron’s death in 1824, Nathan reissued the melodies in an expanded edition, the fourth and last volume of which appeared in July 1840, just months before he sailed for NSW.
GRAPHIC (LEFT)
Isaac Nathan
Artist unknown, c1820
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
GRAPHIC (RIGHT)
Lord Byron in Albanian dress
Thomas Phillips, 1813
LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
AUDIO
‘Jephtha’s daughter’
Composed by Isaac Nathan; words by Lord Byron
Performed by Amy Moore (voice) and Luca Warburton (piano), 2019
RECORDED IN COLLABORATION WITH
THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC
GRAPHIC (RIGHT)
A selection of Hebrew melodies, ancient and modern, composed by Isaac Nathan, with words by Lord Byron
Published by Falkner, London, 1840
ROUSE HILL ESTATE, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Lost & Found
Our house museums have been like exquisite music boxes: we open them and discover, among their collections, an array of musical gems that have lain silent, often for generations.
DR MATTHEW STEPHENS, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW, 2019
Many of the early Australian compositions that were once advertised in newspapers and catalogues appear not to have survived. However, Museums of History NSW has discovered many rare works in the collections of its historic house museums such as Rouse Hill Estate. Since 2011, working with musicologist Dr Graeme Skinner and international researchers, we have made several exciting discoveries. Further treasures, including unique copies, were identified following the donation to Museums of History NSW in 2016 of a large 19th-century sheet music collection by Sydney collector Stewart Symonds.
Documenting Australia's Colonial Musical Heritage
John Winterbottom
From a family of British military bandsmen, John Winterbottom (1817–1897) was as much a businessman and entrepreneur as a musician, and his trademark ‘Monster Concerts’ drew large audiences in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1850s. The only known copy of Winterbottom’s ‘The bird song’, composed for the previously undocumented stage comedy A new way to reclaim a thoughtless husband (1855), was recently discovered in Museums of History NSW's collection.
GRAPHIC (BACKGROUND)
‘Winterbottom and his magnificent band’
Walter George Mason, May 1853, engraving on the cover of John Winterbottom’s ‘Presentation polka’ (also called ‘The peasant polka’), Woolcott & Clarke, Sydney
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
GRAPHIC (LEFT)
A new way to reclaim a thoughtless husband: The bird song: from the new comedy "A new way to reclaim a thoughtless husband": as sung by Mrs. Emma Waller.
Published by W.J. Johnson and Co., Sydney, 1855
CAROLINE SIMPSON LIBRARY & RESEARCH COLLECTION, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
An Unknown Gentleman
There are few known portraits of musicians in mid-19th century Sydney. This watercolour, recently acquired by Museums of History NSW, shows a smartly dressed young gentleman leaning on a piano, and a view out across Sydney Harbour. The man’s identity is currently a mystery, but we might imagine that the Sydney pianist and composer Frederick Ellard looked a little like him. When this picture was painted, in March 1853, Ellard was in his late twenties and known for his sartorial elegance. One of the first locally trained pianists to visit Europe, he was a sought-after music teacher.
LEFT
[Unknown gentleman, leaning on small upright piano, Sydney]
Thomas Wingate, 1853
CAROLINE SIMPSON LIBRARY & RESEARCH COLLECTION,
MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
The Earliest Surviving Composition
Soprano and pianist Tempest Margaret Paul (1780–1857) composed ‘Currency lasses’, the earliest surviving musical composition by an Australian settler. Before this printed edition was found, it was known only from tantalising newspaper reports. It was mentioned in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in November 1825, when it was performed by a military band in response to a toast by explorer and barrister William Charles Wentworth at a farewell dinner for Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. The title refers to the first generation of girls born in Australia, who, by 1825, were taking their place in society and on the dance floor.
VIDEO
‘Currency lasses, an admir’d Australian quadrille’
Composed by Tempest Margaret Paul
Performed by James Doig (piano), 2017
RECORDED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
GRAPHIC
‘Currency lasses, an admir’d Australian quadrille, composed by a Lady at Sydney’
(Tempest Margaret Paul)
Published by J Cross, London, c1830
STEWART SYMONDS SHEET MUSIC COLLECTION, CAROLINE SIMPSON LIBRARY & RESEARCH COLLECTION, MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Click the score above to view on Archive.org
SCORE
‘I think of thee’ by Fredric (sic) Ellard
Published by Francis Ellard, Sydney, c1846–47
STEWART SYMONDS SHEET MUSIC COLLECTION, CAROLINE SIMPSON LIBRARY & RESEARCH COLLECTION,
MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW
Click the score above to view on Archive.org
Unlocking a Lost Australian Song
In December 1846, a new ballad by the young Frederick Ellard was performed at a Sydney concert. ‘I think of thee’ was based on a translation of the Romantic poem ‘Ich gedenke deiner’ by the German writer Goethe. There was no evidence that the song had been published, until a damaged copy was discovered in the Stewart Symonds collection. The last page is missing, but the final seven bars have been reconstructed by Dr Graeme Skinner to allow the song to be performed, unlocking a rare and surprisingly eloquent colonial example of a Romantic song by a young Sydney musician.
For more, visit the Museums of History NSW website.
AUDIO
‘I think of thee’
Composed by Frederick Ellard
Performed by Amy Moore (voice) and Luca Warburton (piano), 2019
RECORDED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Explore the Exhibition
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we live and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.