From Conservatorium to Faculty
Australia's first music degree was awarded in 1879 by The University of Melbourne. The first Ormond Professor, GWL Marshall-Hall, arrived in 1891, and to complement his academic lectures with practical teaching he established the University Conservatorium of Music in 1894; thus a comprehensive musical training, quite unlike the purely academic departments of European universities in its balance of practical skills and theoretical knowledge, became a characteristic of the University of Melbourne course from the outset.
To extend the University's influence on musical standards, the second Ormond Professor, Franklin Peterson, established a public examination system at the Conservatorium which led to the creation of the Australian Music Examinations Board in 1918, and today AMEB (Vic) Ltd is a University of Melbourne venture which examines nearly 40,000 young music students each year.
The Conservatorium became the Faculty of Music in 1926, but its traditional name continued to be widely used in the community, and may even be heard today.
The Faculty absorbed the music department of the Institute of Education in 1994, and today offers a full range of courses to around 700 students.
The present Conservatorium of Music, a graceful white building on Royal Parade, dates from 1909 and is classified by the National Trust of Victoria. It contains an elegant 350-seat concert hall, Melba Hall, with the finest acoustics for chamber music in Melbourne, and is supplemented by space in five other buildings, Zoology, Education, the Centre for Studies in Australian Music, the Early Music Studio and the Baillieu Library.
The past few years have been a time of renewal and change in the Faculty. Major features have been the expansion of graduate research activities and containing development of the Graduate Program to ensure its relevance and quality. Through this process of review, the Faculty seeks to ensure it is well placed to continue to make a distinguished contribution to the training of musicians and the development of music as a discipline.
For further information about the history of the Faculty of Music refer to Peter Tregear, The Conservatorium of Music University of Melbourne (Melbourne: Centre for Studies in Australian Music, 1997) (see CSAM publications).
MUSIC ENDOWMENTS
Chiefly through the work of the fourth Ormond Professor, Sir Bernard Heinze, the Faculty became the most richly endowed music school in Australia. There had been important earlier gifts: the Ormond Chair of Music was founded by the endowment of Francis Ormond, the wealthy pastoralist and parliamentarian who also endowed the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Ormond College, while Dame Nellie Melba had donated the proceeds of a fund-raising concert to build Melba Hall. In Heinze's time, the Melbourne Symphony's annual Sidney Myer Music Bowl Free Concerts came to be established, funded by the University from the endowment of Sidney Myer, founder of the Myer Emporium. Other assistance for orchestral life in Melbourne is provided by the Lady Northcote Orchestra Trust Fund. The Grainger Museum was given to the University by the famous Australian composer-pianist Percy Grainger, and the groundwork for many other endowments was laid.
Today, the Lyre-Bird Press (Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre), one of the world's foremost publishers of scholarly musical editions, is subsidised by the University from the endowment of Louise Hanson-Dyer, founder of the Press and among the most important music philanthropists of modern times. Teaching Fellowships in piano and violin are funded from the endowments of Dudley William Gardiner and Albert and Marie Diamont respectively. Concerts, residencies at the Faculty by many distinguished musicians, and several significant music research projects are funded by the University from the endowments of Catherine Grace McWilliam, Ellinor Gertrude Harris, Truby Williams and Norman Serle.
Portraits of two of the Faculty's benefactors, Louise Hanson-Dyer and Francis Ormond, hang in the foyer of Melba Hall. The portraits of former Ormond Professors that hang in Melba Hall are also gifts; however the portrait of Marshall-Hall, an extremely valuable work by Tom Roberts, hangs in the Grainger Museum.