We often think of life in the past as black and white and silent – but of course it was neither. A visit to any Australian 19th-century historic home will reveal rich colours and textures of textiles and interiors, and the observant visitor will discover the pianos, violins, concertinas and flutes that played the musical accompaniment to the lives of pioneering Australians.
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This year, with the assistance of a grant from ACT Heritage, I have been researching the musical life, through history, of ACT's House Museums. I have found music to perform and to record that illustrates the cultural tastes of the different classes and personalities of people who inhabited each property. In collaboration with ACT Museums and Historic Places, the piano at Mugga Mugga and the piano at Lanyon have been restored by Canberra's Chris Leslie to a condition that renders the instruments playable while retaining the audible sense of the age of these instruments. The project has provided the catalyst to prioritise the repair of musical instruments in these houses, safeguarding these fragile objects for future generations.
In 2016, Arts ACT will fund the commissioning of new compositions and performances on the pianos by Canberra musicians: Michael Sollis and the Gryffin Ensemble, Sandra France, Ian Blake, Alistair Noble and myself with a special performance of historical music by Erin Helyard.
Lanyon homestead, with its gracious verandahs and rambling gardens, is perhaps Canberra's best-loved house museum. In 1833, John Hamilton Mortimer Lanyon and James Wright arrived from England and chose the location on the Murrumbidgee to establish a pastoral enterprise as unauthorised squatters. They returned to Sydney to buy equipment and enough food to last six months while they established their own crops and livestock, returning to begin the venture in 1835.
Those employed as farm workers on the property were assigned convicts and ticket-of-leave holders from Ireland, Scotland, England and one man from Germany. For these workers and for the families who followed, the isolation of the location ensured that making music was an entertainment and a source of consolation for separation from loved ones on the other side of the world. Work songs sung to help dispel the monotony of repetitive tasks such as fencing, sowing or reaping survive in the Australian oral tradition as well as those sung by women washing, mangling, starching, ironing and folding the laundry or kneading dough, making pastry, peeling and chopping vegetables. Dances were a popular event, and in an oral history interview recorded in the 1986 by Susan Withycombe, Helen Flint (nee Rigny, b c.1910) recalled the weekly dances in the hall at Tharwa. The music was provided by local musicians, on a fiddle, two accordions and the piano played by Una West.
From the 1830s to the present day, the residence and surrounding grazing property have been the heart of cultural life, providing a sanctuary in which generations of people living on the Monaro have gathered to celebrate marriages and births and to mourn the dead. For many years it was the only substantial European-built structure in the region and both of the early mistresses of the homestead: Mary Wright (who arrived at Lanyon in 1838) and Jane Cunningham (resident at Lanyon from 1848), offered an open invitation to the people of all denominations living in the district to use the house for religious ceremonies when clergy or priests were able to visit the district. We know of at least two pianos at Lanyon homestead.
The piano now at Lanyon is a rare example of an 1840s Broadwood upright that is in near-original condition. Strings, action and felts have not been replaced and the instrument has had the minimum of adjustment, several tunings and a thorough cleaning to render the piano playable. Visitors to Lanyon on Saturday will hear, as they approach the homestead, the sound of mid-Victorian settler family life – a world in which the piano was the powerful voice of civilised cultural values.
All are warmly invited to visit Lanyon to recreate the music of those who lived there. We will begin in the oldest buildings on the property with songs that may well have been sung in the 1830s by domestic servant, Elizabeth Morton, or Sheep Overseer, Thomas Appleby, as they went about their daily tasks; then enter the drawing room to enjoy a soiree, gathered around the piano. Music will be provided.
Listening to the Past is on at 11.30am and 12.30pm on Saturday, November 28, at the Lanyon Homestead, Tharwa Drive, Tharwa. Bookings are essential at historicplaces.com.au/events/.
