PARTE II. UNIDAD DIDÁCTICA MODELO
E. Actividades de innovación educativa
While women were increasingly participating in classical music activities a range of male music-making activities continued in parallel. For instance,
122ATCJ, 21 November 1896, 34. 123M & A, 28 November 1896, 1133. 124 Woollacott, Fortune, 70.
125 For instance between 1906 and 1908 the SMH had a regular weekly columns entitled “Women in the
Arts” and “Of Interest to Women”. Other women’s columns included The Sunday Times, column “Women’s World”, ATCJ, “Women’s Ways”; and “A Word to Women” which appeared in several newspapers.
brass bands, which in Australia had deeply entrenched military associations, were comprised almost exclusively of men and were extremely popular in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. According to Whiteoak, the “thrusting, penetrating, aggressive power” of brass instruments essentially reinforced a masculine identity that
underpinned its popularity among men.127 They were, according to Bythell, a “ubiquitous feature of Australia’s musical and cultural life in the late
nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century”,128 only declining in popularity in the late 1920s and 1930s in the face of competition from other forms of entertainment.129 Many such bands were “workplace-based” and provided members with “conviviality and camaraderie” as well as a means of making money in lean times.130 Brass band concert programs and
advertisements show that brass bands typically performed a wide-ranging repertoire which included arrangements of classical works, popular songs, opera excerpts, hymns and religious music and, as I will discuss in the next chapter, often claimed to play an important role in educating the public about classical music.
127 John Whiteoak, "Popular Music, Militarism, Women, and the Early "Brass Band" in Australia,"
Australasian Music Research 6 (2001): 45–6.
128 Duncan Bythell, "The Brass Band in Australia: The Transplantation of British Popular Culture, 1850–
1950," in Bands: The brass band movement in the 19th and 20th centuries ed. Trevor Herbert (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 145.
Men, or as they were described in one newspaper article, the “smoking sex”,131 also enjoyed an almost exclusively male form of entertainment called “smoke concerts.” Smoke concerts were popular in Sydney during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. Figure 3.3 presents data derived from the National Library of Australia’s newspaper database Trove for the occurrence of the term “smoke concert” or “smoko concert” in the Herald. These terms first appeared in 1882 and the frequency of their use reached a peak in 1902.
Figure 3.3: Frequency of the term “smoke concert” in The Sydney Morning Herald
between 1882 and 1938.132
Smoke concerts in Australia presumably derived from similar events in England dating from the 1860s, which uniquely combined existing
131SMH, 24 October 1891, 5.
practices of the public concert, the catch or glee club and the music hall.133 They were originally offered by aristocratic amateur music societies but were quickly copied, becoming popular among all classes. Similarly in Australia, smoke concerts were originally offered by male-only music clubs like the Liedertafel and the Orpheus Society. However the practice was soon
adopted by male sporting clubs, political groups and union bodies to mark social occasions.
While many smoke concerts were very informal gatherings more akin to music hall events, some smoke concerts were quite formal affairs that included a large proportion of classical music. For instance the Professional Musicians’ Association’s smoke concert on 25 September 1900, held in honour of the Governor, included works by Bach, Beethoven and
Mendelssohn as well as songs and “humorous recitations”.134 In contrast, the People’s Reform League held their annual smoke concert on 2 April 1904. The Herald’sreport of this event makes it evident that political speeches were the main event of the evening. No classical music was mentioned although the event closed with songs, recitations, exhibitions of physical exercises, of legerdemain (sleight of hand – probably card tricks), and other items.135 According to Eva Mantzourani such events were primarily socially oriented
133 Eva Mantzourani, "’The Aroma of the Music and the Fragrance of the Weed’: Music and Smoking in
Victorian England," Musicology of Lithuania/Lietuvos muzikologija, no. 13 (2012): 121–2.
events designed to bring men together to enjoy social intercourse with their peers:
These male-dominated institutions, denoting an inner circle of persons with common interests were related through their music-making and merry entertainment. Dinner, drinking, smoking and music-making were means by which friends and equals came together to express their shared relationships within a particular social group.136
Mantzourani has argued that smoke concerts may have indirectly contributed to the popularisation and commercialisation of classical music.137 This may have been true of early smoke concerts in Sydney but by the early part of the twentieth century as classical music performances became more exclusively the preserve of entrepreneurs and musical institutions, smoke concert programs tended to exclude classical music and increasingly focused on popular music.
Like other types of concerts, smoke concerts were interrupted by the war. They never regained their former popularity although they did
continue until well into the 1950s, particularly within a military context, for instance as part of Anzac Day celebrations.138 However, as Figure 3.3
illustrates, interest in smoke concerts was declining even before the war. There is evidence to suggest that, at least in part, this may have been linked
136 Mantzourani, “Aroma”, 133. 137 Mantzourani
138 A search using the term “smoke concert” on the ANL’s newspaper database Trove shows that
to efforts by women to promote more wholesome forms of entertainment without alcoholic beverages.
Women were able to attend many smoke concerts but in the Town Hall at least, were usually required to be seated separately from men, in the gallery.139 Attendance by women at Sydney Liedertafel smoke concerts became so popular that by 1905 the attendance in the galleries exceeded the “roll-up of gentlemen” ensuring that men “who sit around the little tables in the body of the hall are careful to be on their best behaviour”. According to the reviewer the programs were not “watered down” at all for the women. Rather, “there was more ‘manly’ music … than we get at the average Liedertafel concert.” To prove the point, the reviewer listed the typical repertoire of songs extolling the heroic deeds of men on the sea, at war and in the hunt, going on to say
“Of effeminacy there wasn’t a trace in the work of the singing society. In the opposite direction the performing members of the Liedertafel displayed an almost sensational amount of strength and spirit.”140
Despite such boasts of masculinity, the presence of women may have
impacted on the characteristic nature of smoke concerts. In a bid to promote their respectability, by 1916 the Liedertafel had separated social activities from music-making activities, firstly abolishing the canteen at smoke
139 See SMH, 18 October 1902, 7, advertisement for Sydney Liedertafel Smoke Concert to be held in the
Sydney Town Hall on 29 October 1902. The announcement states “the galleries will be reserved for ladies and non-smokers”.
concerts and then replacing smoke concerts with “bread and cheese nights” for the purpose of “convivial intercourse among the performing
members”.141 This suggests that music was part of the ongoing gender debates that were a feature of the period.