Musical Nationbuilding and Cultural Exchange in Interwar France and Australia

The interwar period in both Europe and Australia was a fascinating and crucial time for the re-building and reconsideration of national identity. Reeling from the trauma of the Great War, negotiating postwar transitions, surviving the Depression of the 1930s, and hurtling towards yet another world war, all had an impact on cultural life and, in particular, the development of national identity through musical means. Musical nationalism and musical nationbuilding, however, have often been examined within the boundaries of national paradigms. This symposium aims to treat musical nationbuilding (and re-building) processes as the result of contact and tension with other nations rather than phenomena that emerge and develop in isolation. The focus on France and Australia offers the opportunity to examine differing modes of national identity formation, contrasting a nation with an established identity under threat, with a young nation in the process of developing an independent identity. A central question for this symposium is: How did transnational musical exchange affect attempts at national identity formation in France and/or Australia?

Download call for papers: CFP Musical Nationbuilding

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Friday 2 August, 5.30-7.30pm: Keynote lecture by Macgeorge Visiting Speaker Professor Barbara Kelly followed by concert and reception
Prudence Myer Studio, Ian Potter Southbank Centre, Level 5, 43 Sturt St, Southbank
Keynote lecture: 'A Question of Perspective: Musical Internationalism in the Interwar Period' (see abstract below)
Concert includes MCM staff and students performing works by Noël Gallon, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Francis Poulenc.

Saturday 3 August, 9.30am-5pm: Symposium papers
Melba Hall, Gate 12, Royal Pde, Parkville

Schedule for 3 August:

9.30        Welcome

9.45       Session 1

Sarah Kirby, '"Home Made Music": The British Music Society and Musical Exchange Between Australia and the United Kingdom in Interwar Sydney'

Ross Chapman, 'Cosmopolitan Connections: Concert Saxophonists in 1930s Australia'

10.45     coffee break

11.15    Session 2: Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre Archive

Presentation at the Baillieu Library of items from the EOL Archive by Jen Hill, Rare Music Curator (Archives and Special Collections)

12           Lunch break

1.15      Session 3

Kerry Murphy, 'Louise Dyer and the Exposition Internationale, Paris 1937: Forging the Amitié Franco-Australienne'

John Gabriel, 'The National Limits and Transnational Appeal of Catholic Universalism in Darius Milhaud and Paul Claudel's Christophe Colomb'

Samantha Owens, '"A German Martyr"? Gerhard von Keussler's Contribution to Musical Nationbuilding in Australia, 1932-1935'

2.45        coffee break

3.15       Session 4

Helena Tyrväinen, 'New Times, Old Affinities. Association française d’Expansion et d’Échanges artistiques as a sponsor of the Finnish Opera’

Ellan Lincoln-Hyde, 'Nationalistic Motifs in the Interwar Career of Marjorie Lawrence (1907-1979)'

Peter Tregear, '"Putting One's Hart in the Right Place": Reconsidering the Reception of an Australian Composer Between the Two World Wars'

 4.45        Close

ABSTRACTS

KEYNOTE: Macgeorge Visiting Speaker Professor Barbara Kelly (University of Leeds)
'A Question of Perspective: Musical Internationalism in the Interwar Period (France, Europe and Australia)'

This keynote will examine manifestations of internationalism in music, focusing initially on the First World War transition period. Following a number of key musical leaders, including Henry Prunières, Robert Brussels, Edward Dent, Edwin Evans and Egon Wellesz, it will consider behind the scenes efforts to reconnect and exchange after the peace treaty. I will ask what their shared values were and how their notions of internationalism differed.

I then consider the institutions with which these individuals became associated, in particular, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and the Association française d’action artistique (AFAA). The ISCM promised musical exchange and diplomacy through annual festivals of chamber music and initiatives organised by the national sections, which revealed tensions between national aspirations and internationalist commitments. With an awareness of the limitations of the society in addressing live political problems, I explore what the achievements of the ISCM were in nurturing a shared musical understanding. I will also look at the circulation of musicians during this period, notably the French state-run AFAA, which took cross-border diplomacy out of the hands of artistic individuals in a period of continued ‘cold’ conflict, tension and resentment. Indeed, Romain Rolland commented on the heightened tensions between France and Germany and the role that music was playing to overcome them.

Finally, I look at Australia’s notion of musical internationalism in this period, considering institutions such as the International Club, the International Music Society and the Alliance française. Drawing on the Australian press, I will consider the distinctive perspectives Australian society had on interwar musical Europe.

Sarah Kirby, 'Home Made Music’: The British Music Society and Musical Exchange between Australia and the United Kingdom in Interwar Sydney
In 1920, Henri Verbrugghen established the first ‘international’ outpost of the British Music Society in Sydney, Australia. Incorporated in London in 1919, the BMS was formed out of a need for post-WW1 cultural regeneration, aiming to champion British composers and musicians, while increasing public musical appreciation. But such an institution—with its colonial sounding name—received a mixed response in the fairly recently-federated Australia, a nation enmeshed in its own post-war nation building discourses.

This paper explores the role of musical exchange between Australia and the United Kingdom through the activities of the Sydney BMS in the context of inter-war Australian national identity formation. This was a period of significant ambivalence in the construction of Australian identity, as many attempted to challenge the pre-federation ideas of nation that tied Australia so closely to Britain. This era also saw renewed questions of what it meant to be Australian in the musical sphere. It was in this context that the BMS’s activities occupied an uneasy space: on one hand aiming to promote ‘British music proper’ on the Empire’s peripheries, while on the other championing Australian composition as a distinct form. I argue that, for the BMS, musical exchange with Britain was central to the Society’s conception of Australian music and Australian musical identity, whether that was defined as a continuation of ‘British’ musical culture, or in opposition to it.

Ross Chapman, 'Cosmopolitan Connections: Concert Saxophonists in 1930s Australia'
Perceived as a defining symbol of US-inspired popular modernity, saxophones attained unprecedented prominence in interwar Australia. Vaudeville theatres, dance halls, and radio broadcasting houses played host to new sounds from local and touring musicians, reaching a zenith during the Australian Jazz Age (1918–1928). Subsequently, as the Depression prompted popular music to shift from hot to sweet, saxophones on the concert stage began to appear in yet another guise for Australian audiences.

This paper, sharing findings from the fifth chapter of my recently conferred PhD titled Liminaire: Performance Contexts and Cultural Dynamics of the Saxophone in Australia, 1853–1938, examines the cultural influence of four local and international concert saxophonists on 1930s Australia. These four performers – Sydney’s ‘handsome sheik with the sax' Clive Amadio, who performed on an opening night broadcast of the newly-formed Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1932; Finnish-born Josef Kaartinen, who lived in Sydney from 1929 to 1939 and toured nationally with the ABC; German-born virtuoso Sigurd Rascher, who fled Nazi Germany and undertook a prolific ABC-sponsored Australian tour in 1938; and Melbourne-based Ern Pettifer, who made connections with the emerging French classical saxophone school led by Marcel Mule – worked to redefine the instrument’s image for Australian audiences. 

Together, these episodes present an image of an outward-facing, cosmopolitan Australia, at odds with the prevailing view of this being an inward-facing time in our national story. Whether local or from overseas, 1930s concert saxophonists forged new paths and links in Australia, in advance of more formalised institutional structures that would later support concert saxophone playing more comprehensively.

Kerry Murphy, 'Louise Dyer and the Exposition internationale, Paris 1937: forging the ‘amitié Franco-Australienne’
Australian patron and music publisher Louise Dyer (1884–1962) dedicated her life to promoting French music in France and French music and culture in Australia. The latter was harder to do, since her permanent residence from 1929 was France. She did, however, provide Australians with French Music, both scores and recordings and organised many lectures and broadcasts on French Music. She wrote a regular column for the Melbourne Herald newspaper with the clear mission to inform Australians of important events in the commercial, literary, musical and dramatic worlds in France, this was chiefly in the 1930s. It was in the Herald that she first began proselytising about the benefits of the 1937 international Exhibition and how important it was that Australia be properly represented. She attended the exhibition in an official capacity with her presse étrangère card, which gave her special access to many things. It was also in the Herald that she passionately denounced the Pavillion australienne, concuding “that great economist André Siegfried has stated that now Europe seems to be dying the future lies in America and Australia. Cannot something be done to present a true picture of Australia, at this, the world's greatest exhibition?”. This paper explores her contributions to and achievements at the exhibition and her broader aspirations for Franco-Australian friendship and collaboration.

John Gabriel, 'The National Limits and Transnational Appeal of Catholic Universalism in Darius Milhaud and Paul Claudel’s Christophe Colomb'
Alongside the nationalism of the interwar years, universalism and internationalism flourished. Communists promoted their International, and diplomats built the League of Nations. In this paper, I argue that through the identities its creators and its early transnational circulation, Darius Milhaud and Paul Claudel’s 1930 opera Christophe Colomb offers a unique insight into the cultural history of another, largely overlooked internationalist ambition: Catholic universalism.

Paul Claudel, Colomb’s librettist, was a French Catholic who advocated a conservative, even clerical and monarchist vision of modern France. Colomb, however, was written as a play for Jewish Austrian director Max Reinhardt and celebrates Columbus for laying the yet-unrealised foundation of a global Catholic order. After the collaboration with Reinhardt fell through, Claudel took the text to Darius Milhaud, a French Jewish composer with numerous connections to Germany, and the opera was premiered in Berlin in 1930. Its reception there largely focussed on the dramaturgical and multi-medial innovations of the work, as opposed to its political and religious message — a trend continued in modern day scholarship. Critics who did engage this aspect of the work, however, reveal the limits of Claudel’s rather French ideas about universalism. Colomb was further taken up as a model by Austrian Catholic composer Ernst Krenek in his opera Karl V., who not only drew on its dramaturgical innovations, but also read its Catholic universalism through a body of Austrian thinkers who were actively applying such ideas to construct a new, post-imperial Austrian identity at the head of a Catholic European order.

Samantha Owens, '“A German Martyr”? – Gerhard von Keussler’s Contribution to Musical Nationbuilding in Australia, 1932–1935'
On 13 December 1933, prominent members of Melbourne’s musical community gathered in the British Music Society’s rooms to bid farewell to Dr Gerhard von Keussler (1874–1949). Having spent the previous eighteen months in Australia, this distinguished German composer, conductor and musicologist was returning to Europe to fulfil a series of professional engagements. Although focused primarily on composition while in Melbourne, Keussler had also conducted several high profile orchestral and choral concerts in both Sydney and Melbourne. Broadcast live across the nation by the recently established Australian Broadcasting Commission, these performances generated much attention in the press, with Keussler declaring himself “impressed with the musicianship of Australians,” but noting that music in the country was in “in a period of transition.” Simultaneously, in a blatant piece of Nazi party propaganda, an article published in the Zeitschrift für Musik proclaimed Keussler to be “Ein deutscher Märtyrer in Australien,” whose professional activities there had been obstructed in retaliation for the Nazi authorities’ removal of Bruno Walter as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Keussler was back in Melbourne by June 1934, travelling with “more than two tons of music” to use in his new role as conductor of the choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral. When his contract ended one year later, Keussler decided to return to Germany permanently, causing numerous local supporters to deplore “the loss to Australia,” while some also blamed the authorities at the ABC for “this great artistic tragedy.” Drawing upon extensive newspaper commentary, this paper will examine Keussler’s contribution to Australia’s musical life during the 1930s – both as a conductor and composer (including his symphonic fantasy Australia, 1935). It will also consider tensions evoked by Keussler’s position as a German musician working in Australia during this critical interwar period, when Australians were increasingly questioning the dominance of European music and musicians in their search for a national musical identity.

Helena Tyrväinen, 'New Times, Old Affinities. The Association Française d’Expansion et d’Échanges Artistiques as a Sponsor of the Finnish Opera, 1923–1926'
My paper analyses the material conditions of the international relations and their development in the musical domain at an historical turning point. It focuses on the measures and delimitations of state authorities, the business world, the art world, and of individuals at a moment of increasing financial unrest.

The Association française d’Expansion et d’Échanges artistiques was founded in Paris in 1922 in the nationalistic climate following WW1 with the aim of strengthening the worldwide influence of French art. It operated under state protection, and gathered a representative swathe of French society, from bankers to heads of art institutions, from artists to tycoons, from patrons to diplomats.

In Finland in the 1920s, financial difficulties cast doubt on the capacity of the Finnish Opera to operate. The support during the first decade of Finnish national independence provided by the AFEEA for performances of French opera has been overlooked, while its activities regarding musicians’ mobility, concertising and foreigners’ music studies in France have received attention.

The correspondence with the Finnish Opera in the archives of the French Foreign ministry and the National library of France casts light on the allegedly chauvinistic motives of the French and on why in the 1930s the association started to concentrate on the unilateral promotion of French art. It thereby manifests the ongoing significance of mutual trust established before WW1. Wentzel Hagelstam, the Finnish mediator of the interaction, was a Francophile diplomat called back from Paris in 1922 due to diminishing interest of the Finnish government for France.

Ellan Lincoln-Hyde, 'Nationalistic Motifs in the Interwar Career of Marjorie Lawrence (1907-1979)'
The Australian dramatic soprano Marjorie Lawrence (1907-1979) is perhaps primarily known in Australia and France for her identity as a disabled performer and campaigner for polio vaccination drives from the 1940s onward. Certainly, Lawrence rose to international fame beyond the world of opera from the time of her 1941 paraplegia onwards, however, what is often left out of documentary or other biographical works is her identity as an Australian artist in Paris from the 1920s to late 1930s. In this paper I aim to explore Lawrence's performer identity as one of many Australian artists who settled in France, rather than other European or North American locales, to develop their skills. I shall examine the various 'nationalisms' at play around Lawrence as she studied and then premiered in Paris. These include Lawrence's choice to 'lean into' her Australian identity in this European locale, her experience and reflections on fascist nationalism during a tour of Italy, her latent 'British Identity' often overlooked in biographies but key to raising the funds to move to France, and her interaction with North American nationalisms as she began her US career in New York.

Peter Tregear, '"Putting One's Hart in the Right Place": Reconsidering the Reception of an Australian Composer Between the Two World Wars'
The increasing rejection of the symbols of Australia's historical ties to the British Empire over the course of the last century or so has made epithets like “English pastoralist” now sound especially dismissive when applied to an Australian composer. It implies that their music functions as, at best, little more than an aesthetic emollient for both themselves and their audiences. Both constituencies presumably found it otherwise difficult to reconcile a memory of “home” with the alien world they encountered upon arrival in Australia. But is it possible to assert that there is more to be found, and indeed to hear, in such music than merely the expression of some failed British-nationalist project at the end (in both senses) of the British Empire? Focusing on the music of Fritz Bennicke Hart (1874–1949) this paper suggests that we might also legitimately interpret it as representative of transnational and supra-national impulses, which in turn speak to other, more complex, aspects of the Australian immigrant experience.