Artistic Collaboration in Challenging Times
Chamber Music in Queensland, 1901–1950
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2013.6Keywords:
Sustainability in cultural development, music-making, chamber music in early Queensland, organisational and physical infrastructureAbstract
The concept of sustainability is often connected with environmental and socio-economic debates, but it is just as central to cultural developments. Historical studies of music-making within a local context often reveal that any ‘good idea’ needs both initiators and supporters, and also patrons and advocates. For example, the story of chamber music in early Queensland is bound up with contextual factors such as organisational and physical infrastructure and, more importantly, the contributions of leaders whose long-term vision encouraged audiences to participate. While important beginnings appeared during the colonial decades, changing circumstances required new approaches to sustaining chamber music traditions in the post-Federation era.
References
Various aspects of Queensland's orchestral music have been documented previously. For example, see Frederick Erickson, ‘The bands and orchestras of colonial Queensland’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland (1987); Andrew Schultz, ‘Brisbane orchestras, 1920 to 1947’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland (1981).
Roennfeldt, Peter, ‘Music by the few for the many: chamber music in colonial Queensland’, Queensland Review 1 (2012), 178–89. This article traces the contributions of many musicians whose family members or students continued working in the early twentieth century.
The Sleath legacy continued through various instruments owned by local musicians, notably when a set of Howard's instruments were donated to the University of Queensland in 1974, which spawned the short-lived Mayne String Quartet. Substantial endowments from the Sleath estate were also made to both that institution and the Queensland Conservatorium in the late 1980s.
The Benvenuti legacy lived on in later decades, with younger family members Leo and Alice both early members of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1947.
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The Queensland branch of the Musicians’ Union of Australia was founded in 1911.
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Unidentified press cutting, possibly Melbourne Herald Sun, 26 November 1945.
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