It provides opportunities for scholars not only to contextualise the extensive 19th-century sheet music collections already held by SLM at Rouse Hill House & Farm, Meroogal and the CSL&RC but also to musically interpret other SLM properties that no longer hold their original sheet music, such as the Scottish soundscape of the Macleay family at Elizabeth Bay House. The new acquisition is rich in such associations between the sheet music and its original owners. the collection also includes some rare Australian publications and many examples of English, Scottish and Irish publications retailed through early Sydney music sellers. This piece of music is known from other copies held in Australian libraries, but our copy is included in an album which belonged to Miss Annie Amelia Myers (1843–1882), daughter of a successful Sydney tobacconist. It was first mentioned in The Australian in February 1825 when it was performed in response to a toast by William Charles Wentworth of Vaucluse House at a public dinner for the outgoing governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane.Īnother notable piece is ‘The City of Sydney polka’ (1854) by Charles Packer, dedicated by the Sydney publishers Woolcott and Clarke to the very same William Charles Wentworth. Musicologist Dr Graeme Skinner has identified this piece as the earliest surviving printed copy of a non-Indigenous Australian composition, previously unknown beyond newspaper reports. Stewart Symonds sheet music collection, Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. One of the highlights of the collection is a piece titled ‘Currency lasses, an admir’d Australian quadrille’, composed by ‘a Lady at Sydney’ and published in London around 1830.Ĭover: ‘Currency lasses, an admir’d Australian quadrille’, composed by a Lady at Sydney. Much of the music was published in London and other British and European cities, but the collection also includes some rare Australian publications and many examples of English, Scottish and Irish publications retailed through early Sydney music sellers. The collection comprises 1563 pieces of music bound into 46 volumes, including 55 leaves of manuscript transcriptions, and is mostly music for piano or piano and voice, with some arrangements for harp, flute, violin and cello. The Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection (CSL&RC) has recently acquired, through the Commonwealth Cultural Gifts Program, an important collection of 19th-century sheet music provenanced to people living in NSW. A recently acquired collection of printed sheet music provides valuable insights into Sydney’s music trade and concert scene in the 19th century and offers opportunities for musical interpretation of Sydney Living Museums’ places.
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