Sound Heritage Sydney: Making Music in Historic Places
On the 28th of March 2017, an international forum of invited experts spent a day at Elizabeth Bay House sharing their knowledge about music making in historic houses.
Have you ever wondered about how music was made in the Australian homes of the past? What music was popular, who played it and how was it played? Having pondered these questions for some time, Sydney Living Museums (now Museums of History NSW) and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music invited a range of experts from across Australia, the UK, and New Zealand to participate in a symposium at Elizabeth Bay House to explore the history of music making in the Australian home and its international contexts.
Sound Heritage Sydney brought together musicians, scholars and heritage practitioners to discuss what and how music was played in historic houses and at other historic sites. The forum was also interested in uncovering innovative ways music can be used to reveal new narratives in historic properties for contemporary visitors.
Sydney Living Museums is the Australian partner of the British-based Sound Heritage network, co-founded by Professor Jeanice Brooks, University of Southampton, and Jonathan Wainwright, University of York, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). Launched in 2015, Sound Heritage is an international network that is seeking a richer understanding of how music functioned in the life of historic houses in the 18th and 19th centuries. SLM is one of three international partners along with representatives from the US and Ireland who have participated with our British counterparts in a series of three study days in England. SLM was invited to join Sound Heritage in recognition of our contribution, led by the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, towards a better understanding of domestic music making in colonial NSW and further afield.
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Dr Matthew Stephens
Research Librarian
Matthew Stephens is research librarian at the Caroline Simpson Library & Collection. He is particularly fascinated by early book, musical instrument and sheet music collections in NSW and the stories they tell. Addicted to the historical research process, Matthew has reframed the biography of the eighteenth-century British cross-dressing soldier, Hannah Snell, rediscovered the lost library of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, and completed a PhD on the early history of the Australian Museum Library and the origins and use of scientific literature in nineteenth-century New South Wales. More recently, Matthew has led the interpretation of the history of domestic music in MHNSW house museums. Since 2015 he has been MHNSW’s representative in the Sound Heritage network (UK) and is co-author and co-editor of Sound Heritage: Making Music Matter in Historic Houses (Routledge, 2022). In 2019, Matthew curated the Songs of Home exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, which examined the musical landscape of NSW during the first 70 years of European settlement. He has collaborated with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, on numerous projects including as Partner Investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘Hearing the Music of Early NSW, 1788-1860’ (2021-23). Two research projects led by Matthew on the reinstatement of part of the dispersed Macleay family library at Elizabeth Bay House and the Dowling Songbook Project have received National Trust Heritage Awards.
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