Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLiminaire: Performance Contexts and Cultural Dynamics of the Saxophone in Australia, 1853–1938( 2023-06)This project explores the largely untold first eighty-five years of the saxophone in Australia. For a unique Australian context it examines, and ultimately challenges, the long- and widely-held view that the instrument was solely a product and expression of popular or ‘lowbrow’ musical culture; instead, it argues that the saxophone’s character in Australia between 1853 and 1938 was enduringly cosmopolitan, stylistically diverse across the cultural strata, and a mirror to evolving notions of Australian identity. A five-chapter dissertation, weighted at 80%, details the saxophone’s Australian efflorescence in a variety of performance contexts from the goldrush to the cusp of the Second World War. A number of landmark performers and performances are established, including the headline discovery that the instrument debuted in Australia before being first heard in the United States. Drawing on categories established by John Whiteoak, this study incorporates ‘approved’ musical settings that were seen to reinforce social cohesion, such as the concert stage and the bandstand, and ‘anonymous’ settings, including the commercially-oriented domains of minstrelsy, vaudeville, and jazz. Notions of liminality are employed to explain and contextualise the saxophone’s marginal, and yet still remarkably potent, place in musical and wider cultural and social life over this time. This argument is built on research into a wide range of primary sources, including historical newspaper and journal articles, sheet music, sound recordings, silent and sound film, and interviews with notable Australian musicians. An accompanying audio-visual folio, weighted at 20%, features 33 minutes of new recordings for saxophone ensemble, saxophone and piano, and concert band in march and art music transcription forms.
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ItemMelodic Excursions: The Brazilian cavaquinho’s global journey( 2021)This research project explores the long and diverse history of the cavaquinho through a combination of practical performance and archival research. This four-string soprano guitar is a ubiquitous instrument in several musical cultures and its origins may be traced to Portugal where very similar instruments have been in use since the seventeenth century. The cavaquinho, and closely related instruments, spread across the globe along routes of migration and this study will focus on four key traditions, those of Brazil, Portugal, Indonesia, and Hawaii. These historical links will be investigated through recorded performances played on the modern Brazilian cavaquinho, together with written analysis of historical and performance contexts. A diverse portfolio of recordings showcases performance practices and repertoires from the nineteenth century, through to the flourishing tradition of the twentieth century and new and emerging contemporary genres. The Brazilian cavaquinho is the instrument through which I engage with these contrasting repertoires, drawing on the richness of the instrument’s technique and performance style. The recordings are not presented as historical recreations, but as extensions of the distinct evolving traditions through the application of contemporary practices. Collaborations with renowned international practitioners feature on many of the recordings, and the creative element of this thesis extends to original arrangements and compositions. Through a combination of performance recordings, research, analysis and original arrangements and compositions, this project demonstrates how the cavaquinho is the perfect vehicle to illuminate and reinvigorate historically linked traditions and styles.
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Item'In tune with the times': the history of performing pitch in Melbourne( 2011)On 6 March 1909, Nellie Melba (1861–1931) presented a set of French diapason normal (a1=435) woodwind and brass instruments, known as the ‘Melba Gift’, to the Marshall-Hall Orchestra in Melbourne. Although she would benefit from use of the instruments in her later Australian opera tours, Melba made the gift primarily to help establish the French diapason normal as the uniform standard of performing pitch in Melbourne. At the beginning of the twentieth century, orchestral playing in the city was marred by tuning problems, and Melba’s gift formed part of a wider movement to standardise pitch in Melbourne. Melba’s set of instruments draws attention to an aspect of music making in the city, the frequency at which musical instruments are tuned, that, although fundamental to musical practice, has not yet been the subject of scholarly investigation. The aim of this PhD thesis is to explore how issues of performing pitch have shaped musical life in Melbourne. Focussing on the pitch of local pipe organs, orchestras, military bands, and civilian brass bands, this thesis traces the various standards of pitch used in Melbourne from the mid nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. It examines local discussion on pitch, and shows how practice has been driven by practical needs, economic considerations, aesthetics, and cultural attitudes. The thesis highlights local concern to keep up to date with international practice.