City in Australia. Unlike Australian convict settlements, the city (the capital of South Australia) was founded, in 1836, through planned colonization and subsidized migration. Dependence on a pastoral and mining economy meant that the city’s prosperity was subject to the fluctuating seasons, the Victorian goldrush and the commercial interests of rival cities. 19th-century migration added a distinct ethnic mix to the transplanted British society, most notably the German communities who established wine-making regions. European and Asian migration after World War II continued this trend, and national clubs and cultural organizations preserve many diverse music and dance traditions. The Aboriginal population in South Australia (estimated at 12,000 before colonization) was decimated and pushed into arid lands during the 19th century, but extensive research in Aboriginal culture and special initiatives such as the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music, founded at the University of Adelaide by ethnomusicologist Catherine J. Ellis in 1975, have resulted in a revitalization of Aboriginal traditions. This cultural mix has resulted in a musical life in which professional state performing arts companies and the international Adelaide Festival of Arts (founded by Professor John Bishop in 1960) are complemented by a world music festival WOMADelaide (1992), the Barossa Music Festival (1992) in the wine-growing region, strong church music traditions (especially Anglican and Lutheran), commitment to music education, vibrant choral music, brass bands, music theatre, and a lively jazz, folk and rock scene.
Colonial cultural life was that of the educated middle class. The state’s library, art gallery, museum, botanic gardens and town hall were established early, as were public education institutions. Music organizations flourished, notably the Adelaide Choral Society (1844), Adelaide Town Band (1848), Adelaide Liedertafel (1858) and Adelaide Philharmonic Society (1862). Early hybrid musical/theatrical entertainments gave way to the lucrative operatic and concert touring circuit during the goldrush. Coppins’s English Opera Company (1856), Bianchi’s Grand Italian Opera Company (1861) and, from 1865, regular seasons of William Lyster’s various English and Italian opera companies, heralded a golden age of operatic performance in the colony. The latest European repertory – including Carmen, Lohengrin, Faust and Aida – was performed in the purpose-built Theatre Royal (1868).
Development of chamber and orchestral music through the Adelaide String Quartet Club (1880–85), Adelaide Orchestral Society (1879–80) and Heinecke’s (later Adelaide) Grand Orchestra (1891) and its subsequent counterpart the South Australian Orchestra (1920) was assisted by the founding of the first professional music school in Australia, the Adelaide College of Music (1883), established by Immanuel Riemann and later directed by Cecil Sharp. A chair in music at the University of Adelaide (first incumbent Joshua Ives, 1885) was founded through public subscription and secured by a bequest from Thomas Elder in 1897 that created the Elder Conservatorium of Music.
Adelaide attracted numbers of distinguished teachers with German, middle-European and British backgrounds who supplemented the many resident musicians earning a respectable living by teaching, performing and retailing. Local creative output reflects this, with an early domination by German-born composers such as Carl Linger (composer of Song of Australia) and Moritz Heuzenroeder, and the English cathedral organists Cecil Sharp and John Dunn. After World War I, during which the German influence was suppressed, a conservative English style reigned, evident in the works of Horace Perkins, Duncan McKie and Jack Peters, although Brewster-Jones promoted interest in a more modern style. The churches played a prominent role in supporting composition and providing employment between 1880 and 1950. The Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic churches were committed to elaborate choral music traditions, hymn production (including those for use in rural missions) and organ building. The Protestant churches, most notably Methodist, supported not only hymnology but also choral singing, especially oratorio.
The vibrant 19th-century practice of choral music, through musical societies, glee clubs, Liedertafel and singing groups, has been maintained to the present day in a mix of professional, semi-professional (e.g. Adelaide Chorus, Corinthian Singers), amateur and church choirs. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Adelaide Wireless Chorus (1929) became the Adelaide Singers (1946–76), which after World War II remained Australia’s sole professional chamber choir, commissioning for performance and broadcast the work of Australian composers. The ABC’s South Australian SO (studio orchestra from 1934, permanent from 1949, renamed Adelaide SO in 1975) gave subscription concerts, open-air popular concerts and broadcasts, and provided accompaniment for local and visiting opera and ballet companies, choirs and soloists. The ABC also promoted jazz, especially through entrepreneur and broadcaster Kim Bonython. In opera, the J.C. Williamson company, notably in partnerships with Nellie Melba (1924 and 1928) and Joan Sutherland (1965), had much success, subsidizing opera with lighter fare. Local opera production periodically flourished at the Elder Conservatorium, and music theatre prospered, especially with support from the new Adelaide Festival Centre (1973). With direct government patronage, the semi-professional Intimate Opera Company (1957) emerged as New Opera South Australia (1973) and finally as the State Opera of South Australia (1976), which in 1998 mounted the first fully produced Ring cycle in Australia.
Australian government initiatives, sponsorship and a cultivation of Australian composition from the mid-1960s, as well as a proactive state government under Don Dunstan, benefited South Australian composers. The university’s adventurous visiting composer scheme (1962) began with Henk Badings, followed by Anthony Hopkins and Peter Maxwell Davies. P.R. Tahourdin (1969) and Tristram Cary (1974) established an electronic/computer music facility. Richard Meale joined the staff in 1969, teaching several of the next generation of major Australian composers. Professional ensembles, for example the University of Adelaide Wind Quintet (1964) and the Australian String Quartet (1985), as well as new and early music ensembles, have been supported by the university and the state government. The biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts has continued to present some of the world’s finest musicians and promoted innovative and culturally diverse national and local productions and events. A comprehensive history of the performing arts in South Australia, edited by the distinguished musicologist Andrew D. McCredie while professor of musicology at the University of Adelaide, is testimony to a century and a half of rich musical endeavour.
H. Brewster-Jones: ‘Pioneers and Problems: South Australia’s Musical History’, Australian Musical News, xxvii/3 (1936), 1–3, 28–33
B. Naylor: Organ Building in South Australia (MA thesis, U. of Adelaide, 1970)
P. Roennfeldt: ‘A History of the First Hundred Years of Lutheran Church Music in South Australia’, MMA, xii (1987), 161–6
A.D. McCredie, ed.: From Colonel Light into the Footlights: the Performing Arts in South Australia from 1836 to the Present (Adelaide, 1988)
R. Holmes: Through the Opera Glass: a Chronological Register of Opera Performed in South Australia, 1836 to 1988 (Adelaide, 1991, suppl., 1996)
H. Anderson: ‘Virtue in a Wilderness: Cecil Sharp’s Australian Sojourn, 1882–1892’, Folk Music Journal, vi (1994), 617–52
ROBYN HOLMES, PETER CAMPBELL