PAST PRESENT FUTURE: THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SCHOOLS MUSIC CLUB IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA 1926-2006
It is a great privilege to have been asked to help launch the book Past Present Future: the History of the Royal Schools Music Club in Western Australia 1926-2006 by my friend and colleague Jean Farrant. As the club celebrates the wonderful milestone of its 80th Anniversary, it is appropriate that its history has been documented and doubly appropriate that it has been done so expertly by Jean who in recent years has been building a fine reputation as an expert on the history of music in Western Australia, especially in the first half of the twentieth century – a period which of course marks the early years of what was first known as the LAB Club, later to become the Royal Schools Music Club.
Jean is well known to many students who passed through her classes while she was a music lecturer, first at Claremont Teachers’ College, and then as a foundation member of staff in the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts. Many of those students became teachers or artists who were (and are) either members of this club or performers at its meetings. Given her personal knowledge of so many important players in the Club’s history, as well as her now quite encyclopaedic knowledge of musical activities in the Perth of the past as well as the present, it is no wonder that this book brings alive the personalities and happenings of the Club’s past in a truly remarkable way.
I would like to consider just a little of Jean’s own recent history at least as far as her research work is concerned. She came to our notice for her investigations into the musical activity in the Eastern Goldfields in the early years of the 20th century, especially the place of choirs and brass bands in those thriving communities during the time of the WA Gold Rush. This led her to embark on comprehensive research into musical life in Perth from the same period onwards, which bore fruit in a substantial chapter in the 2003 book Farewell Cinderella: Creating Arts and Identity in Western Australia (published by UWA Press). In the last few years it has been my great pleasure to have worked closely with Jean on a number of the music entries that will be appearing in the forthcoming Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia. The main frustration with this work has been that we have had to confine ourselves to extremely strict word limitations, when there is so much that we (and particularly Jean) would like to have included from the many interesting events that have occurred in the state’s musical life since the colonial days. In her history of this club, however, Jean has been given a much freer hand for painting a multi-faceted canvas of what has been – as David Tunley remarks in his excellent preface, and with my apologies for mixing up two artistic metaphors – “a further tile in the emerging mosaic of musical developments in Western Australia”.
I recently attended a conference at the University of New England which had as its main theme Music as Local Tradition and Regional Practice. I heard a number of interesting papers which examined how musical traditions have developed in particular localised or regional areas, or been transferred from one country to another. I mention this conference because the Royal Schools Music Club is an excellent example of a particular musical tradition (in this case British) being transplanted to this country, and then being transformed over the years by introducing the music of and practices from other cultures, thus ensuring its survival while similar organisations have fallen by the wayside. At one stage in that conference the question was asked “When does a local practice become a tradition?” and a participant came up with what might have been thought of as a clever answer – “When the original reason for the particular practice has long been forgotten”. Well, you can rest assured that when you read this book you will find out all the reasons for why and when the particular traditions of this club were established. In addition you will read about and see pictures of the personalities that have guided the club and participated in its many activities, and you will understand how the various competitions have come about and learn about the performers who have been successful in them.
May I then commend Jean’s book to you and implore every one of you to ensure that you do not leave this special celebration evening without a copy in your hand.