Author Archive for Michael Lea

The Violin Twins 10th Anniversary

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Violin made by Harry Vatiliotis, 2001. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

A bit of background…As the new millennium was about to begin composer and violinist Romano Crivici and I came up with a crazy idea – could we get two almost identical violins and test them against each other to see if their respective sounds changed over time?

Most people seemed to think that the sound of an instrument did change, but had anyone really tested it? And in fact, could it be tested? Now for the really crazy part – it’s not uncommon for violins to be played for a very long time, so if tests were possible, would they need to be conducted for the next 200 years or so to really see what changes were happening?

If we were going to go ahead with this idea we’d need to use brand new violins and a skilled maker who could attempt to make “twins”. Romano was keen to get a new violin and liked the work of Sydney maker Harry Vatiliotis. The Museum also commissions musical instruments for its collection from time to time from local makers which helps to document their work and their thoughts behind making. Harry had worked with the esteemed AE Smith, thought by many to have been Australia’s most renowned violin maker, and whose workshop had seen some of the leading Australian makers pass through it such as William Paszek, William Dolphin and Lloyd Adams. The Museum’s collection already had instruments by Smith and his associates including Sampson, Griffin, Paszek, Dolphin, Clarke, Newham and Kitty Smith so a Vatiliotis would help to make the collection even more complete. Harry kindly agreed to the idea of trying to make two violins from the same larger pieces of timber and as similarly as he could, one for Romano and one for the Powerhouse. These were finished in 2001.

To complete the plan – call in the scientists! Thankfully Professor Joe Wolfe, Associate Professor John Smith and then PhD student, now Doctor, Ra Inta from the University of NSW Physics Department’s Musical Acoustics Lab also agreed to put some tests together on these two instruments to see if changes could be measured.

Apart from physical tests done on parts of the violins during their construction some perception tests were also carried out to see if musicians, both as audience and players, could hear differences in the violins and be able to pick one from another. Another thing we wanted to see was if a violin played by a player regularly and was subjected to different environments also differed in sound from an instrument played on only once or twice a year in a museum and held in a fairly constant environment.

Several tests were carried out over subsequent years to record any changes. 2011 saw the 10th anniversary of the start of what is called the Violin Twins Project and gave a chance for Harry Vatiliotis and his son Michael to come in to the Museum a few weeks ago to see and hear the violins and see how they’ve been travelling. Romano brought his own violin and played both it and its Powerhouse Twin. It was a great opportunity to reunite the maker, the player and the instruments for these informal comparisons.

It should be stressed that this latest comparison was just that – a chance to compare the sounds after 10 years. It was not an official scientific test under perfect conditions. However, the general consensus amongst those present was that both instruments still sound very similar with the Powerhouse violin having a more open sound and Romano’s being a bit darker in tone. However, as the Powerhouse instrument had relatively newish strings and Romano’s older played-in strings this may have also accounted for some of the sound differences.

We’re all waiting to see what these two violins will sound like in 2211!

Post by Michael Lea, Curator, music & musical instruments

Dame Nellie Melba Turns 150

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The 19th May 2011 marks the birth of one of Australia’s greatest performers, Dame Nellie Melba.

98/26/2 Costume, opera, dress, worn by Dame Nellie Melba, c.1910. Gift of Sydney Opera House Trust, 1998. Collection: Powerhouse Museum.

Perhaps the most internationally renowned Australian performer in the period before the Second World War, Dame Nellie Melba was recognised as one of the worlds greatest sopranos with her fame living on to the present day. Born Helen Porter Mitchell in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1861 she made her professional singing debut in Melbourne in 1884. Travelling to London in 1886 with her father she made her opera debut in Brussels later the following year. After further successful roles in Paris she returned to London to perform at Convent Garden in 1889 in the opera Romeo et Juliette to great acclaim.

It was not until 1902 that Melba returned to Australia for her first national concert tour and over the following years she made several visits to her home country. In 1909 she performed not only in Australian capital cities but also travelled to many regional areas. Forming the Melba-Williamson Opera Company, Melba was in Australia again from 1911 and from this point, especially during World War 1, spent more time in Australia until the war ended when she went back to perform again in Europe.

This recently acquired concert program is of particular relevance to Sydney and relates to the period when Melba came back to Australia in 1921. Realising the high price of concert tickets she decided to give a series of “Concerts for the People” in both Melbourne and Sydney during 1922 at the reduced cost of five shillings and sixpence to allow more people to hear her sing. Sixteen concerts at Melbourne Town Hall saw about 30,000 people attend (1). The Sydney concerts, held at the Sydney Town Hall, were also anticipated to be a resounding success with the Town Hall capacity being for 3,000 patrons. The fourteen Sydney concerts held between 21 March and 28th April 1922 were often to packed houses. Of the second concert a journalist noted (2).

She is not a singer whose voice varies much, good health and a perfect production, combining to keep it in almost unvarying perfection.

Later in the series the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 8 April that, based on the current bookings, there would be 35,000 people attending the concerts. By this date there were still six concerts in the series to go. At her second final Sydney concert Melba announced that it was her 29th People’s Concert (including the Melbourne concerts) and that she had sung to over 100,000 people (3). At the conclusion of the final concert of the series on 28 April she told the audience (4).

“I have never enjoyed singing as much in my whole career as I have at these ‘Concerts for the People’

The following years saw Melba performing both in Europe and Australia, her final Australian performances of her career being in late 1928. Dame Nellie Melba died in Sydney on 23 February 1931.

Melba program, Concert for the People, 1922. Gift of Pam Burden, 2011 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

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The Powerhouse Museum’s collection includes several objects linked with Dame Nellie Melba including photographs, audio recordings and concert programs such as the recently acquired program above.

H7077 Evening jacket owned and worn by Dame Nellie Melba, C 1910. Gift of Keith Wood, 1962. Collection: Powerhouse Museum.

There are also several pieces of costume worn by Melba both in her off-stage life, such as an evening jacket above, and in the operatic role of Marguerite in ‘Faust’ (98/26/1 & 98/26/2 Gifts of Sydney Opera House Trust, 1998) shown at the beginning of this post.

Other objects in the collection with a Melba connection include a ceremonial sword owned by Melba’s father when appointed a member of the Victorian Commission attending the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London in 1886 (H7080 gift of Keith Wood, 1962). Another interesting Melba-related artefact in the Powerhouse Museum’s collection shows Dame Nellie’s generosity – a Bechstein baby grand piano dating from 1924 which was given to the donor’s parents as a wedding gift (94/270/1 gift of Anne Fairbairn, 1994).

Other cultural institutions around the country are also celebrating Melba’s birthday, The Arts Centre, Melbourne, the The Melba Online Museum lists many events in Melbourne and the The Australian National Film & Sound Archive has links to audio recordings of Melba singing in their collection.

References
1 Sydney Morning Herald 22/3/1922 p.14
2 Sydney Morning Herald 24/3/1922 p.11
3 Sydney Morning Herald 25/4/1922, p.8
4 Sydney Morning Herald 29/4/1922 p.13

Further reading:

K. Brisbane; Entertaining Australia (Currency Press, Sydney, 1991)

J. Davidson; Melba, Dame Nellie (1861-1931)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography – Online Edition

J. Hetherington; Melba (FW Cheshire, Melbourne, 1967)

B & F MacKenzie; Singers of Australia from Melba to Sutherland (Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1967)

Newspaper articles on Dame Nellie Melba at TROVE

More Discoveries About A Hidden Musical Treasure: Robert Louis Stevenson

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The 13th November 2010 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of author, Robert Louis Stevenson. Some visitors who have been to the Powerhouse Discovery Centre at Castle Hill may have seen his piano which has been part of the Museum’s musical instrument collection since the early 1960s. New information has recently come to light that helps explain what happened to the piano in the period after Robert Louis Stevenson died and its acquisition by the Powerhouse Museum.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Stevenson, the author of stories such as Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, moved to the South Pacific for health reasons and eventually settled in the village of Vailima just south of Apia, the capital of Samoa in 1891. He was a very keen musician playing both piano and the flageolet and also composed musical works. The piano, made by F Doerner & Sohn of Stuttgart was bought out from Scotland arriving in Samoa in June 1891. It had been sold by Patersons of Edinburgh but it is uncertain if Stevenson was the first owner. The serial number of the piano suggests it was made about 1880, so either Stevenson or his family (possibly his mother) had bought the instrument new around then or else it was bought second hand for the move to Samoa. The former is likely as it arrived with the family furniture and is described in a letter by Stevenson’s mother, Maggie. She later also calls it “my piano”.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

A few years earlier Stevenson expressed his passion for playing the instrument in a letter to a Mrs Jenkin in 1886; “I write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life.” (From Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, To Mrs Fleeming Jenkin, Skerryvore, Bournmouth, April 1886).

Stevenson died in Samoa on 3rd December 1894. In 1898 some of his possessions including the piano were auctioned in Apia by licensed auctioneer Mr J Blacklock acting on behalf of Fannie Stevenson (Stevenson’s widow) and her lawyer. Blacklock wrote a handwritten certificate of authenticity and also a signed typed copy that stated that the instrument had belonged to Stevenson, was sold and then sent to Auckland, New Zealand. Thankfully someone (possibly Blacklock or the next owner) had the foresight to frame the original certificate, and with the copy, attach them to the underside of the lid. It seems subsequent owners also continued this tradition by sticking much later biographical newspaper clippings about Stevenson to the underside of the lid and back of the upper front panel.

Out of the blue in 1961 the Museum was approached by the piano’s owner at the time, resident in Sydney, and after some negotiation it was subsequently acquired the same year. Little was known about its history in the period between when it was auctioned in Samoa and then acquired by the Museum.

Thanks to the online newspaper resources provided by the National Library’s of Australia and New Zealand new information has been found about the fate of the piano. In February 1932 it was reported in several newspapers that the piano had been “discovered” in Devonport near Auckland, New Zealand where it had been in a local home and then with a local firm. Several reports claimed that; “It is made of black ebony, and was specially designed to withstand the Samoan climate. It is strongly built, and is nearly twice the ordinary weight.” (eg. Sydney Morning Herald, 25/2/1932, p.8). However, the construction of the piano seems to be typical of late 19th century German instruments in general rather than having been adapted for Samoan conditions.

Then in 1936 the piano makes another appearance in the news, this time in Sydney. It had been bought by the head of a local piano firm, R. Harold Court who was planning to put it in a new home he was having built at Church Point. The piano was also displayed, (presumably while the building work was being done), in an “Exhibition of Musical Instruments of Historic Interest” as part of the seventh annual Music Week held in the premises of Sydney retailer David Jones. Not only was the piano exhibited but it was also played and accompanied a vocal performance of Stevenson’s work, “The Requiem”.

In another lucky twist of fate, Powerhouse Discovery Centre volunteer, Richard Pike, was recently in Scotland at the Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh and noticed a photograph on the wall in the section dedicated to the life of Robert Louis Stevenson. The photo includes Stevenson and members of his family photographed with the piano.
Further Reading;

Margaret Isabella Stevenson, Letters From Samoa 1891-1895 (e books: http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/margaret-isabella-balfour-stevenson/letters-from-samoa-1891-1895-hci/1-letters-from-samoa-1891-1895-hci.shtml)

Martin Terry; Treasure Island to Black Spot – Stevenson In Samoa and Sydney (The Australian Antique Collector, January –June 1995, 49th Edition, pp.48-52.)

Michael Lea
Curator, music & musical instruments

Vale Dame Joan Sutherland (1926-2010)

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Nitsa Yioupras.

The passing of the great Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland this week was a very sad event and her influence on Australian musical culture will be sorely missed. However, she also left a great legacy for those that had the privilege to know her and train and perform with her.

Dame Joan left Australia to continue study in England at the Royal College of Music in 1951. She made her Covent Garden debut in 1952 after she was accepted into the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden singing the role of the First Lady in Mozart’s Opera, The Magic Flute.

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) was completed by Mozart in 1791 just a few months before his death in December of that year. The 30th of September marked the 219th Anniversary of the first performance of the opera in Vienna. Currently on display in the Powerhouse Museum’s musical instrument exhibition is an early published copy of the Magic Flute dating from 1795. It is a reduction of the original score arranged for voice, violin and piano. (EA & VI Crome Collection, 1976).

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Other items in the Museum’s collection relating to Dame Joan Sutherland include three photographic negatives in the collection of photographer Alec Murray (1917-2002) which feature Dame Joan in her role as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor which she performed at Covent Garden in 1959 (Gift of Alec and Sue Murray, 2008). A school house badge in the Museum’s collection from her old school St Catherine’s Waverley features a harp and the letter “S” for the school house Sutherland, named in honour of Dame Joan. (Gift of St Catherine’s School, 1989).

Devereux Viola

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Viola made by John Devereux, 1869. 2003/36/1. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski.

In the Museum’s Conservation Department, Tim Morris and Bronwen Griffin have been taking apart an unusual tuning peg mechanism for a viola.

The viola was made by John Devereux in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1869. John Devereux was one of the earliest professional makers of violin family instruments (violins, violas, cellos and double basses) in Australia. He was known for using Australian timbers and made special adaptations to his instruments to suit the heat and humidity of the Australian climate.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Nitsa Yioupras.

A quote from the Argus Newspaper, Melbourne talks about the tuning mechanism. It’s part of a slightly longer account of a visit and presentation of a violin by Devereux to HRH Prince Alfred, The Duke of Edinburgh in 1868 which resulted in him getting a royal appointment which appears on his labels after this point:

His Royal Highness expressed himself much pleased with his present and listened attentively to Mr Devereux’s instructions relative to the pegs of the instruments, an invention of the maker. These are ingeniously constructed so as to prevent the slips which pegs of the old fashioned pattern were liable to. (The Argus, Melbourne, 15/1/1868, p.5 col.b.)

Normally, a viola (or violin or cello) tuning peg is wooden with a finger grip at one end and a tapered wooden pin, which fits through holes in the instrument’s peg box, below the scroll. The string is pushed through a hole in the shaft and wound around several times by turning the peg until the correct pitch is reached. The peg is held in place by string tension and by push-fitting the taper into the peg box. This is a simple method, which usually works, but can be affected by changes in humidity. Pegs can become too loose and slip, causing the instrument to go out of tune, or too stiff to move, also making the instrument impossible to tune.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Nitsa Yioupras.

Devereux’s invention was to replace the tapered section of the wooden pin with a straight metal rod to which the string was attached as above. This rod passes through the holes in the peg box and extends to a threaded section, over which a wooden finger grip is secured with a metal ferrule. This assembly encompasses a flange on either side of one wall of the peg box, which squeezes against the timber when the ferrule is tightened, creating a clutch mechanism. The tuning peg looks and acts pretty much like an ordinary wooden one, but is less susceptible to changes in the weather.

For more information on other Devereux instruments in the Powerhouse collection, see here.

Bronwen Griffin, Mixed Media Conservator and Tim Morris, Metals Conservator

Happy Anniversary Messiah!

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The 13th April marks the anniversary of the first performance of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. This was premiered in Dublin on 13th April 1742. Now a 268th anniversary may seem a bit excessive to celebrate and some may even say that after the first 267, who’s counting. But it’s special for the Powerhouse Museum because we have a copy of Messiah in the hand of John Christopher Smith, Handel’s copyist, in the collection and we’ve recently put it on display in our musical instruments exhibition.

The copy was done during Handel’s lifetime and was one of three sets that were made. The section in the Museum’s collection is the second part of one of the sets and features the Hallelujah Chorus. On Handel’s death in 1759 it was given to Messiah’s librettist Charles Jennens. He bequeathed it to his cousin, the Earl of Aylesford, where it passed through the generations until it was finally sold in 1917. Soon after, it was bought by the publisher and Handel author Sir Newman Flower, who in turn gave it to the English contralto singer Phyllis Lett (Phyllis sung in several performances of Messiah), for a wedding present. Phyllis died in 1962 and it is uncertain what became of the manuscript until it was bought by collector and Museum benefactor, Mr EA Crome. It was acquired by the Powerhouse Museum in 1981.

Michael Lea
Curator, Music and Musical Instruments

Meet the curator- Michael Lea

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Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Michael Lea

What is your speciality area?
Music and musical instruments. It’s a very diverse area so covers a lot of ground from historical to contemporary aspects through to musical traditions from a variety of cultures. We also look at music from a number of different angles that includes the science and design behind instruments as well as historical developments and also the way music has been used culturally in all its various forms. Music is found in many different contexts and you’ll see instruments from the collection on display in a wide variety of exhibitions at the museum.

Although I’ve got a background in music I also have a strong history and social sciences training so I’ve got a particular interest in Australian instrument makers, especially those that are now long forgotten. When possible I try to revive interest in them through research and articles and by putting their works on display or helping organise a performance where one might be played. Organising some of the performances at the museum is another part of the job.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Is that a polite question to ask? I’ve been the curator in this area since 1998 but began working with the music collection in 1985.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
The whole collection is fascinating so that’s a tough one to answer. That being said though, one of my faves is the Maccaferri plastic guitar that you can see below. Another is this small banjo mandolin I’m holding in the photo which was made in Australia in the late 1940s or 1950s. This one was donated to the museum by Melbourne instrument maker Roger Buckmaster. Pacific was the name of an instrument company that was established by Hec McLennan in Melbourne and made guitars as well as these smaller instruments. They started in the 1940s around about the same time as Maton Guitars did, but possibly initially used McLennan’s name in the early stages rather than Pacific.

One of the reasons I like them is that rather than being high end collectables or professional instruments they were a basic day-to-day instrument that anyone might play and which today aren’t very widely known. They were at the lower end of the market using fairly cheap materials, which might account for the condition of some of them today – they were probably well used as a knock-around instrument rather than kept in a pristine state which might happen to more up market models. They often used paint stencils for their name and other things such as fret markers, rather than having actual inlay in the fingerboard. The guitars they made also used stencils on the body sometimes with figures of cowboys or even palm trees to add an exotic touch. The banjo mandolin is an intriguing thing in itself – one of a range of instruments that seem to have been cross bred with something else (in this case the banjo and the mandolin). To take the idea further…we’ve also got a walking stick violin in the collection! We don’t have much information about Hec McLennan and Pacific so I’d love to hear more if anyone knows.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
In terms of research probably the work I’ve done on nineteenth century makers such as John Devereux (bowed strings) or Jordan Wainwright (flutes), both of who were amongst some of the earliest professional makers working in the European tradition in Australia and which not much was known about. Over the years we’ve also commissioned instruments from present day makers to document their work and have also commissioned some new music for exhibitions and programs from composers, both of which have been great ways for the museum to make a link with the creative process. For exhibitions one of the highlights with hindsight was working with the team on Ngaramang Bayumi: an exhibition about Australian Indigenous music and dance. It broke some new ground for the museum and involved lots of people working with us from the arts and communities around Australia. Working with Coxie and Brakie on the rock and roll exhibition, Real Wild Child, was a hoot too!

Maccaferri plastic guitar

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum

As I mentioned this is another of my favourite things in the collection. It was bought by the museum from Maccaferri’s plastics company in the USA in the 1950s as an example of what you could do with plastic, and it doesn’t sound too bad as an instrument either. Despite being made of plastic they weren’t toys but designed as well-made instruments that were cheap but also fairly reliable, as long as you didn’t drop it or turn it into one of Dali’s melting moments by putting it on a hot surface! As the instruction booklet wisely says “DO NOT drop it on a hard surface…it will break.”

Maccaferri was a guitarist and had also done some training with a luthier as a younger man, so knew a thing or two about guitar design. This “inside” knowledge and understanding really shows and is comparable to when a composer for example really begins understanding an instrument like guitar and writing to bring out its unique peculiarities and capabilities, (in the classical realm I think Villa Llobos did this really well and Leo Brouwer being a guitarist has done it in more recent times.) Maccaferri began working with the French instrument company, Selmer in the late 1920s. They began making his radical wooden acoustic guitar that had an internal soundboard which was a way of trying to get rid of wolf notes. (Jose Ramirez III also experimented with this idea – creating the de camera guitar – which is another fave of mine in the collection with a really beautiful sound!!). There were some other features he included such as the shape of the sound hole and tailpiece.

I love the way Maccaferri kept on thinking about guitars even though he went in a seemingly different direction by establishing a plastics company that manufactured reeds. When Maccaferri started making his own plastic guitars in the 1950s he put some of these design features in as well as some more radical features like the way the action (the height of the strings above the fretboard) can be adjusted by moving the tailpiece up or down rather than physically having to cut down or replace the bridge or doing a whole neck adjustment. I also can’t go past the description of the materials in the instruction booklet; “Made of special, highly resounding plastic of ever lasting beauty”.

At the same time he also made ukuleles that apparently sold really well, whereas the guitars didn’t sell very well at all. Stocks of unsold guitars were found in the 1980s and started coming onto the market complete with their instruction booklets. Some wooden acoustic guitars are described as cigar boxes but I’m not sure how you’d describe this one, although the great guitar fashionista of the 1980s Guitar Player magazines, Teisco Del Rey, suggested it had a variety of uses including as a jelly mould.

Michael Lea
Curator, music & musical instruments