Spanning two decades of the cultural life of Melbourne, from 1891 until the start of World War I, this collection of the letters of the composer, conductor and critic G.W.L. Marshall-Hall samples the scandal, disappointments, achievements and camaraderie of those years. Sometimes caustic and often opinionated, the letters expose their author's infectious enthusaism for Art as well as his tendency to rile his enemies. Gathered here from public and private archives in Australia and Britain are 249 of the extant letters, each of which offers a vivid portrait of a man many described as a musical genius.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert was an important composer in the first decades of the 20th century. He was however largely ignored as a composer in his native Germany until the 1960s, but it was the English-speaking world which 'discovered' him in the early 1900s and realised that he was one of the most important organ-composers of his era. Arthur Nickson was a leading Australian-born musician, initially trained in Melbourne, and later in London. This book contains the letters from a bilateral correspondence, which started cautiously, formally, in 1913; it was interrupted by the Great War but recommenced in 1923. Nickson shared these letters with few others. Many had no idea of their content until the collection was published for the first time, solely in an English translation, in 1996. This is now the second edition of that same work, in which some translations are revised, more extensive annotations provided, and the entire original German text reproduced.

A highly readable history of the University of Melbourne that examines its growth from a small provincial institution, educating the elite of a relatively narrow society, to a major teaching and research institution - changes of a magnitude which could never have been envisaged in 1935 when the story begins.

Selected from papers given at the third biennial conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, this volume, in common with its two predecessors, reflects the interdisciplinary character of the topic. The introductory essay by Julian Rushton foregrounds some of the questions that are key to this area of study: what is the nineteenth century? what is British music? and did London influence the continent? The essays which follow are divided into broad thematic groups covering aspects of gender, church music, national identity, and local and national institutions. This collection illustrates that while nineteenth-century British music studies is still in its infancy as a field of research, it is one that is burgeoning and contributing to our understanding of British social and cultural life of the period.

First emerging in North America and Europe in the late 1920s, contemporary percussion practices have transitioned from the fringes of contemporary music to the forefront over the past 90 years. In the 1960s contemporary percussion practices reached Australian shores and a new generation of artists added their voices to this narrative. The role of Australian activity is not yet embedded in the wider narrative of international contemporary percussion, nor is the significance of developments in contemporary percussion practices fully realised in the context of Australian music history. In this monograph, political, social and cultural influences on this art form will be examined for the first time in a historical survey of contemporary percussion music in Australia over a 50-year period, from 1960 to 2010. The rise of the percussion ensemble in the twentieth century to a standard chamber music ensemble is now recognised as one of the major advances in western art music practice internationally. A focus will be placed on ensemble activity via definitive documentation and analysis of ensembles that are amongst the most pioneering and longest established of Australian contemporary music organisations, including the Australian Percussion Ensemble, Synergy Percussion, Adelaide Percussions, Nova Ensemble, Tetrafide Percussion, Taikoz, Clocked Out and Speak Percussion amongst others. Closing with a discussion of influences and identity, this historical narrative will expand our understanding of the impact of Australian contributions to the international contemporary music scene while simultaneously examining how developments in contemporary percussion have contributed to Australia’s cultural identity.